Removing the stigma from Ultra Processed Foods

Here’s a quick question. If I have an admittedly strange choice between a lump of lard, and a slice of wholemeal bread for my afternoon snack, which do you think is the healthier option?

Obviously ‘healthier’ is a slightly subjective term, but my guess is that most of you will have chosen the bread. And although many qualified dietitians and nutritionists would agree, there is a growing school of thought that would answer differently. For them, any mass-produced bread would constitute an ‘Ultra Processed Food’ or UPF, whereas the lard would be classified as a processed culinary ingredient and considered the healthier option. 

This bizarre way of thinking, created by a research group called NOVA, is something that has been adopted by the World Health Organisation, written about in countless articles, featured in a recent BBC shock-documentary, and integrated into Brazil’s dietary guidelines. It holds that the only way to eat healthily is to favour ingredients such as cheese, sugar, butter and beef dripping, avoiding UPFs such as muesli, flavoured yoghurt and pre-packaged vegetables.

Many believers assert that Ultra Processed Foods, rather vaguely defined as ‘industrial formulations made from a series of processes’, are uniquely and universally unhealthy, despite this defying all logic and sense. UPF is an incredibly broad category, encompassing everything from tinned soup, seeded flatbreads and hummus, right through to Snickers, Fizzy Cola Bottles and hotdogs. We are supposed to agree that all these things are uniquely unhealthy, whereas the indulgent homemade lasagne I rustle up on special weekends, which is both highly palatable and stuffed full of fat, salt, and refined carbs, is absolutely fine. 

This sounds as if I am making a ridiculous straw man argument, projecting views onto people that do not reflect how they really think. But I assure you that for many prominent supporters of this system, I am not. The creator of the UPF method for categorising foods, Professor Carlos Montiero, is on record as saying ‘there is no such thing as a healthy ultra-processed product’. He even classifies baby formula as a UPF, despite it being essential for many children’s survival, and has campaigned vociferously against its use.  Similarly, Joanna Blythman, a journalist and prominent anti food industry campaigner, recently claimed that all UPFs were ‘a disaster for our bodies’, although given that she has recently reinvented herself as a Covid conspiracist, her opinion on medical matters should perhaps be taken lightly.

But for less extreme advocates of the UPF system, and there are many, I ask you this. If you don’t hold an absolute believe that UPF classifies foods into meaningful unhealthy/healthy groups, then what on earth is the point? Why not adopt one of the other more detailed classification systems, that are widely accepted, evidence based and far more useful, such as IFIC, Codex or the Healthy Eating Index? 

How has such a flawed, illogical system of food classification such as UPF infiltrated so successfully into our media, policy makers, epidemiologists, and nutrition scientists? The answer, I believe, lies within the way that postmodernist thinking has grown to influence modern political and scientific discourse. 

Postmodernism, a previously obscure branch of deconstructionist philosophy, grew to prominence not long after the global communist project dramatically fell apart in the late 1980s. It is grounded in a distrust of science and rational thinking, and a belief that there are no absolute truths, only interpretations of reality. Although obscure, and let’s face it, a bit silly given the very real progress that science and rationality have delivered, postmodernism has had an increasing influence on modern discourse over the past few decades.

UPF ideology clearly sits within this school of thought. If something is produced by a large company, it is by definition a UPF, so must be considered harmful. There can be no appeal to reason. There are no exceptions. You must not try and rationalise. The NOVA guidelines explicitly state that bread produced in a bakery above a certain size is a UPF, but the same bread cooked in a smaller facility is not. Health is defined by the size of the production room, not the composition or process. Anyone arguing that this cannot be true is told that the truth is not important. Interpretation is all that matters. Because in postmodernism, all truths are relative (apart from that one). 

Academic research into the health harms of UPFs does exist, but it centres upon correlation studies, showing that consumption is associated with various negative outcomes. Yet there are clearly huge confounding factors in any such study, not least economic effects, and the tendency for people who are busy, stressed, ill, elderly or disabled to favour more convenient options. The choice to cook meals from fresh ingredients is a privilege held by people with nice lives, money and means. It should be no surprise that such people live longer, healthier lives. 

But most damning of all, and the reason why I suspect a postmodern influence, is that there has never been a serious attempt to ascertain a mechanistic reason why such a broad, diverse group of food items might be causing negative health outcomes. There is no testable hypothesis of the why, which is the foundation of all good scientific enquiry. Within the current state of knowledge regarding human nutrition and physiology, there is no plausible explanation for a common effect of all UPF foods, and I can confidently predict that there never will be. Yet we are asked to believe that this does not matter, and told we are somehow missing the point. Such disregard for the principles of rational, scientific thinking is only acceptable to those who believe there is no such thing as absolute truth.

I have, to my cost, attempted to argue with many of the advocates of UPF thinking over the past few years. It is a fool’s game. I am dismissed as an industry shill, and my questions deemed to be not worthy of answering, which is handy because they have no satisfactory answers. UPF is an unfalsifiable dogma, an ideology that is impenetrable to attacks using logic and sense.

Of course, one might argue that I am being a terrible pedant. It is undeniably true that many diets high in UPFs are unhealthy. If you only eat Snickers, Haribos and hotdogs, you are unlikely to thrive. If you swap lentils and steamed fish for Pop Tarts and Dorritos, you will probably see measurable differences over time. 

But in trying to categorise foods in such an overly simplistic way, we are doing a huge disservice to consumers. We are outlawing items that might help busy, stressed people eat a little bit better. And by giving meat, animal fats and sugar a free pass, we are absolving foods that we know can have a negative impact on health and the environment. The cynic in me often ponders that the UPF classification, which clearly favours the consumption of meat and dairy, originated in Brazil, a country with a long, dark history of corruption and lobbying by its livestock industry.

As with most practical applications of postmodernist theory, focusing time and effort on stopping people from eating UPFs frequently gives rise to the wrong solutions. Useless, alienating food guidelines that no real person can follow. Needless guilt and dietary shame piled on to people who are already stressed, tired and sick. Lack of incentive to improve the foods that actually fit into people lives. Although the Brazilian guidelines are routinely praised by affluent campaigners around the world, I have spent time working with dozens of nutritionists and dietitians in that country, and they universally condemn the NOVA system as unrealistic and alienating, especially among the poorest communities. 

If you are still a UPF believer, a question worth asking is this. Which change do you think would lead to the biggest improvements in people’s lives? Making all manufactured food more expensive and less accessible? Or working to improve the foods people currently eat, to make them more healthful and nutritious? UPF ideology tells us that the later is impossible, when it clearly is not. And if you think the former is a better way forward, then I have some magic unprocessed beans to sell you.

 Anthony Warner