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Ultra-Processed Foods: The 3 Label Clues You Can’t Ignore

Delaney Jameson

5 November 2025

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You’re standing in the grocery aisle, trying to do the “right” thing. You grab a protein bar for breakfast, maybe some “veggie straws” for your kid’s lunch, and a low-fat yogurt. You’re trying.

And yet… an hour after that protein bar, you’re starving. You look at the “veggie” snack, and the first ingredient is potato starch. You feel confused, a little duped, and honestly, still hungry.

If this sounds familiar, I want to tell you something really important: It’s not your fault.

You don’t have a “lack of willpower.” You’re not “bad” at dieting. You are a human being with a body that evolved to eat food, and you’re navigating a food system that has gotten very, very good at selling you “industrial formulations” disguised as food.

These are ultra-processed foods, or UPFs. And they’ve quietly taken over. In the United States, they account for a shocking 53.0% of the average adult’s calories. For kids and teens? It’s even higher, at 61.9%.

The problem is, they’re marketed as convenient, tasty, and often, healthy. But they’re not. They’re specifically engineered to make you buy more and eat more.

So, let’s pull back the curtain. Let’s figure out the code. Because once you can spot them, you can take your power back.

Wait, What Is “Ultra-Processed”?

Look, “processed” is a confusing word. Is a canned bean “processed?” Yes. Is a can of ravioli “processed?” Also yes. But your body does not respond to them in the same way.

This is where the NOVA classification system comes in. It’s a tool researchers use, and it’s brilliant. It doesn’t care about fat or sugar; it only cares about how a food was made. It splits everything into four simple groups.

• Group 1: Unprocessed & Minimally Processed Foods. This is “food.” Stuff you recognize. An apple, a bag of spinach, a fresh chicken breast, an egg, and a bag of plain oats.
• Group 2: Processed Culinary Ingredients. This is the stuff you use in your kitchen to make food. Olive oil, butter, salt, sugar, vinegar.
• Group 3: Processed Foods. This is just cooking. It’s what happens when you combine Group 1 and Group 2. Think of a can of beans (beans + water + salt), a block of real cheese, or a fresh loaf of bread from a bakery (flour + water + salt + yeast).

For all of human history, we’ve mostly eaten a mix of Groups 1, 2, and 3. The problem is the new kid on the block:

• Group 4: Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs). This isn’t cooking. This is a formulation. UPFs are industrial creations. They start by breaking whole foods down into their cheapest parts (like high-fructose corn syrup, hydrolyzed proteins, and modified starches). Then, they reassemble them with a long list of “cosmetic” additives—emulsifiers, thickeners, artificial flavors, and dyes—to make them look, feel, and taste like something edible.

Here’s the simplest way to think about it, a kind of “Kitchen Test”: If it’s wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient you wouldn’t find in your home kitchen, it’s almost certainly a UPF.

“But It’s Just Empty Calories, Right?” (Nope. It’s Worse.)

For decades, we were told the problem was just “empty calories.” Too much fat, too much sugar. If a UPF was “low-fat” or “sugar-free,” it was fine.

Then, in 2019, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) named Dr. Kevin Hall did a groundbreaking study that changed everything.

Here’s what he did: He had 20 people live in a lab for a month. For two weeks, they ate an all-UPF diet. For the other two weeks, they ate an all-unprocessed (Group 1) diet. They were told to eat as much or as little as they wanted.

Now, here’s the genius part: The two diets were perfectly matched on the label. They had the same amount of calories, fat, sugar, protein, salt, and fiber.

If the “empty calorie” idea were true, nothing should have happened. But here’s what did:

When people were on the ultra-processed diet, they spontaneously ate an average of 500 extra calories per day. They couldn’t help it. As a result, they gained 2 pounds in 2 weeks.

When they switched to the unprocessed diet, they naturally ate 500 fewer calories and lost 2 pounds.

Think about that. The problem wasn’t the nutrients. It was the food itself. The UPF meals were physically softer, and people ate them faster, outrunning their body’s own fullness hormones.

It’s not your willpower that’s failing. It’s that the “food” is designed to make you fail.

The Real-World Damage (This Is Why It Matters)

That 500-calorie-a-day difference, scaled up over a whole population, is a public health disaster. And in 2024, the data confirmed our worst fears.

A massive “umbrella review” published in The BMJ looked at 45 different meta-analyses involving nearly 10 million people. The findings were staggering. It found direct, significant links between high-UPF diets and 32 different adverse health outcomes.

The evidence was “convincing” (the highest level of proof) for:

• A 50% increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
• A 48% increased risk of developing anxiety.

And it was “highly suggestive” of:

• A 55% increased risk of obesity.
• A 40% increased risk of Type 2 diabetes.
• A 21% increased risk of death from any cause.
• A 20% increased risk of depression.

This isn’t just about weight. It’s about our hearts. It’s about our brains.

As Dr. Stephen Devries, a preventive cardiologist, puts it, “Ultraprocessed foods are the perfect storm to promote overconsumption and weight gain: They are laboratory engineered to maximize appeal, are calorie-dense, and have little or no fiber”.

He also said this, and I’ve never forgotten it: “Ultraprocessed foods are better at preserving shelf life than human life”.

Your 3-Clue Detection Kit (How to Spot a UPF in the Wild)

Okay. That was heavy. But knowledge is power, and I promised you a way to fight back. So here it is.

Your mission is simple: Ignore the Front of the Package, Read the Back.

The front is marketing.¹ It’s full of buzzwords and “health halos” designed to make you feel good.¹⁴ The back—the ingredients list—is a legal document. It’s where the truth is.

When you turn that package over, look for these three clues.

Clue #1: The “Chemistry Lab” List

This is the “Kitchen Test” in action. Scan the ingredients. Do you see words that you would never use in your own kitchen? That’s your red flag.

These aren’t food. They are industrial additives used to create texture, add flavor, and extend shelf-life.³

• The “Base” (Broken-down food): Modified food starch, maltodextrin, hydrolyzed proteins, soy protein isolate.
• The “Cosmetics” (Texture & Flavor): Gums (xanthan, carrageenan, guar), emulsifiers (soy lecithin, mono- and diglycerides), flavor enhancers (monosodium glutamate/MSG), “natural flavors” (which are made in a lab), and artificial colors (Red 40, Yellow 5).

If you see a list of these, it’s a Group 4 UPF. Put it down.

Clue #2: The “Health Halo” Deception

This is the sneaky one. You have to be most skeptical of the packages that scream the loudest about how healthy they are.

• “Low-Fat” or “Fat-Free”: When they take the fat out, they take the taste and texture out. So what do they add back in? Sugar, salt, and… Clue #1 (gums, thickeners) to make it feel like food in your mouth.
• “Gluten-Free”: Unless you have celiac disease, this is often a trap. To replace wheat, they use a mix of refined potato starch and rice starch, and then need extra industrial gums (Clue #1) to hold it all together.
• “Organic”: This is the most misleading halo of all. “Organic” is a farming term. It means it was grown without certain pesticides. It says nothing about the level of processing. Organic cookies, organic fruit snacks, and organic soda are all still UPFs.

Clue #3: The “Hidden Language” for Sugar, Fat & Salt

This is about disguise. The ingredients list is ordered by weight, so if these are in the top 3-5, it’s a problem.

• Spotting Hidden Sugars: They don’t want “Sugar” to be the #1 ingredient. So they use 10 different kinds. Look for: high-fructose corn syrup, evaporated cane juice, dextrose, maltose, fruit juice concentrate, brown rice syrup.
• Spotting the “0g Trans Fat” Lie: This one makes me the angriest. By law, if a “serving” has less than 0.5 grams of trans fat, the front of the package can say “0g Trans Fat”. But who eats one “serving” of cookies? Eat two or three, and you’re getting a dangerous amount of the worst fat on the planet.
• The Only Way to Know: Ignore the front. Read the ingredients. If you see the words “partially hydrogenated oil,” the product contains trans fat. Period. Put it back and walk away.

Here’s a little cheat sheet to pull this all together.

A Little Nuance (Because It’s Not All Bad)

Okay, let’s just take a breath. This isn’t about being perfect. It’s not about guilt. It’s about awareness. And there’s some important nuance.

Myth: “All Processing is Bad”

This just isn’t true. We need processing. A great example is corn. For centuries, ancient Mesoamerican cultures would soak corn in an alkaline solution (lime) before grinding it into masa harina. This process, called nixtamalization, is critical. It chemically unlocks the corn’s Vitamin B3. Without it, a corn-based diet causes pellagra, a deadly disease. That’s beneficial processing.

So, Group 3 (canning, fermenting, cooking) is fine. It’s Group 4 (deconstructing and reformulating) that’s the problem.

The “Cheerios Paradox”: Are All UPFs Equally Evil?

Probably not. This is a “spectrum of harm.” Original Cheerios, for example, are technically a UPF because of the extrusion process. But they’re also made from whole-grain oats and are low in sugar. That is worlds different from a brightly colored, sugary, “fruit”-flavored cereal.

The big 2024 studies back this up. The worst offenders—the ones most strongly linked to early death—were ready-to-eat processed meats, sugary drinks, and ultra-processed breakfast foods.

So, the goal isn’t to live a perfectly “clean” life. The goal is harm reduction.

How to Take Back Your Kitchen (Without Losing Your Mind)

So, what do we do? We’re busy, we’re on a budget, and those “ready-to-heat” meals are, well… ready.

Dr. Neha Sachdev, a family physician, gave the most practical advice I’ve ever heard.

1. “Shop the Perimeter.” This is brilliant. Think about your grocery store. Where is the Group 1 food? Fresh produce, meat, fish, and dairy are all on the outside walls. The center aisles are the “danger zone”—the land of shelf-stable Group 4 formulations. Stick to the perimeter, and you’ll automatically eat better.
2. “Cook Your Meals.” Cooking is the ultimate antidote to ultra-processing. Even if it’s just scrambling some eggs (Group 1) with some spinach (Group 1) and cheese (Group 3).
3. “Start Small.” Don’t try to purge your whole pantry. That’s stressful and doesn’t last. Just pick one thing.

This “start small” idea is best as a “Simple Swap” strategy. Don’t “eliminate”—just “replace.”

Need Some Tools to Make This Easier? Look Into These.

Look, I get it. The biggest hurdle to ditching UPFs isn’t wanting to; it’s time. Cooking from scratch (Groups 1, 2, & 3) feels like a ton of work. The good news is you don’t have to do it all by hand. The right tools can make cooking real food just as convenient as opening a box. Here are a few things that can genuinely help.   

1. Glass Meal Prep Containers 

The “Simple Swap” strategy (Part 6) runs on meal prep. Having good, non-leaky glass containers makes it easy to pack lunches or store pre-chopped veggies. The Pyrex Mealbox Bento Box containers are a great, sturdy option.

2. A Go-To Personal Blender 

That “sugary cereal” or “soda” swap is way easier when you can make a great smoothie in 60 seconds. The Nutribullet Pro 900 is consistently rated as a powerhouse for this. 

3. A Simple Bread Machine 

This is a game-changer. Store-bought bread is one of the sneakiest UPFs. A bread machine lets you use four ingredients (flour, water, salt, yeast) and wake up to a real loaf. This Amazon Basics one is a simple, no-fuss starting point.

4. A “Do-It-All” Multi-Cooker 

An Instant Pot or a similar multi-cooker is the secret to making Group 1 foods (like dried beans) and Group 3 meals (like stews) fast. It’s the ultimate ‘set it and forget it’ tool for cooking real food.

5. A Whole-Food Cookbook 

Sometimes you just need inspiration. A good cookbook can give you the confidence to try. “The Whole Life Nutrition Cookbook” is mentioned as a great resource with over 300 recipes to get you started.