This essay is a very helpful, succinct review of how we have gotten to the place. We are as far as nutrition and heart disease. As far as Ultra processed foods are concerned… If it doesn’t look like food, it’s not food! I truly don’t believe the exact diet (Mediterranean, vegan, carnivore) matter as much as eating, locally sourced, nutrient dense foods. Grass fed and grass finished beef and pork, true pasture, raised chickens, eggs from the same source, and local fruits and vegetables which have minimal pesticide interventions.
“I truly don’t believe the exact diet (Mediterranean, vegan, carnivore) matter as much as eating, locally sourced, nutrient dense foods.”
You have hit the proverbial nail on the head my friend! I agree 100% with your statement: don’t you worry, I got you covered on this one as we continue our long journey into lifestyle modification.
The secret of a healthy lifestyle does not lay on fad diets, supplements, nutraceuticals or even FDA approved medicines (except when needed for treatment of established medical condition). The underlying cause of metabolic syndrome and all its associated conditions (i.e., obesity, type 2 diabetes, HTN, fatty liver, etc.) is the systematic erosion on our lifestyle caused by the pressures of modern society.
This series on lifestyle modification is extensive by design (thirteen individual essays in total) because the problem is complex and wide ranging. Unless we develop a full understanding of what the problem is, we have little hope to correct course in our own life. The series contains foundational essays discussing the problem in detail, followed by specific actionable steps that anyone can adopt to correct the problems.
My hope is that this series will help people understand the magnitude of the problem and provide them with easy to adopt strategies to improve their metabolic health going forward.
Thanks for reading and thanks for your thoughtful comment.
I would like you to research and tell us what the additives are chemically and the researched evidence that they cause harm. Every expert just plies the term Ultra Processed Foods. Look at the photograph I’d the supermarket shelves you have shown. From the hundreds of nice coloured bags in the shelves of different snacks, you can just list out 5 or 6 coded additives which are emulsifiers, anti oxidants etc. And the listing will tell you what are they chemically. Like for example glycerol mono stearate ( GMS). And please enlighten us with available information and evidence what are known metabolic downside with that additive and some evidence anecdotes. All we get is motherhood warning statements that they are bad for health. All said and done, 99.5 % by weight of the snack inside is made up of flour, salt, oil, spices which you use everyday as the base for your cooking. They cannot be the culprits.
Thank you for your comment. Yours is a fair question and one worth addressing in detail.
The reality is that there are approximately between 3,000 - 4,000 known direct industrial food additives, and over 10,000 if you include artificial flavorings and other indirect additives. The FDA maintains a lists of almost 4,000 substances in its public Substances Added to Food database, which covers direct additives. The EAFUS inventory (Everything Added to Food in the United States) lists over 3,000 substances, and there are an additional 3,200+ indirect additives (packaging-related substances that can migrate into food).
As you will surely understand, a comprehensive review of every additive in use would be a regulatory-agency-scale undertaking, but a focused look at the ones that appear most frequently and carry the most evidence of harm is both doable and useful. As per your suggestion I will add this to my list of topics to cover in a future article.
That said, I want to address a few points in your comment, because they reflect assumptions I think many readers share and they're worth getting right.
The concern with ultra-processed foods is not limited to trace additives. You mention that 99.5% of a snack is flour, salt, oil, and spices, the same ingredients you'd use at home. But that's not quite accurate, and this is where ingredient labels become important.
In the USA ingredient labels list components in descending order by weight (not sure if this is the case in India), so the first few ingredients tell you what the product mostly is. When you look at those leading ingredients in many UPFs, you'll often find they are not the versions you'd use at home: refined starches rather than whole grain flour, hydrogenated or interesterified fats rather than natural oil products, added sugars (sometimes under multiple names) in quantities no home cook would use. The processing itself often alters the food matrix in ways that affect how your body absorbs and metabolizes it, independent of any additive.
As for the additives themselves, looking at a single product label and seeing only 5 or 6 of them can make the amounts seem trivial. But most people who regularly consume UPFs aren't eating one product a day, they're eating several across meals and snacks. The same emulsifiers, preservatives, and colorants appear across multiple products, which means cumulative daily intake is far higher than any single label suggests. On top of that, regulatory safety evaluations typically assess additives individually. How a dozen different additives interact when consumed together daily is an area with very little research. That's not a personal claim of proven harm from those interactions, it's an observation that the evidence of safety for real-world consumption patterns simply doesn't exist.
A simple and practical test: read the ingredient list and ask yourself whether the main items are something you keep in your pantry and use regularly in your own cooking. If you find ingredients you wouldn't recognize, can't buy, or would never use at home, you're likely looking at a UPF. This is, in essence, what the NOVA classification captures which I referenced in the original piece.
So while I agree that a closer look at specific additives is valuable and I intend to provide one, the case against UPF does not rest on additives alone. It rests on the totality of what industrial processing does to food: reformulating base ingredients, engineering palatability, and adding compounds that most home kitchens have no use for.
The 80:20, or even 90:10 rule could be applying in food additives also, the UPF ones. It means that 10% of the list would be applicable in 90% of the common items. Two looks, you can whittle down the 2000-3000 list to 100 and then down 20. Then those 20 can be closely looked at. As an exercise, I used to do it for sets of common branded moisturisers and even though each one will carry an ingredient list 20 or 25, you can find that 5-6 would be common and they would be the key components. One can also guess which two are generically similar and can be considered as one. All said and done, some solid information would be available on a few additives and the rest of the common ones we have to go by anecdotal experience. It doesn’t seem like an easy subject to conclude readily. Look at drugs in use. There are reportedly some 2500 molecules known to have been in use in the last 80 odd years of medicinal renaissance. I don’t think all of them underwent the 5-10 year cycle of safety studies including in cohorts. There were other reasonable considerations used to bring many of them on the table. Eventually, the long user experience is the final verdict. By these experiences, one can conclude that not all food additives are bad.
"Two looks, you can whittle down the 2000-3000 list to 100 and then down 20. Then those 20 can be closely looked at. As an exercise, I used to do it for sets of common branded moisturisers and even though each one will carry an ingredient list 20 or 25, you can find that 5-6 would be common and they would be the key components."
Your idea aligns with my general plan: I will research the most commonly used industrial food additives, look among those for the ones that have well documented health impact, and narrow the list to about 25 or so. I do agree this can be useful information for everyone, and something missing from most articles about UPF including my own.
And you are quite correct, there are some general categories among additives such as industrial sweeteners for example, where there are many individual substances used which clearly share the same health concerns and can be treated as one.
I thank you for your thoughtful comment and appreciate you bringing this topic to my attention.
No, they are not a problem. I eat them with some regularity.
Looking at the ingredient list on the can, they have sardines, water and salt, nothing more. That is by definition a NOVA 3 category (canned fish) and is perfectly fine.
This essay is a very helpful, succinct review of how we have gotten to the place. We are as far as nutrition and heart disease. As far as Ultra processed foods are concerned… If it doesn’t look like food, it’s not food! I truly don’t believe the exact diet (Mediterranean, vegan, carnivore) matter as much as eating, locally sourced, nutrient dense foods. Grass fed and grass finished beef and pork, true pasture, raised chickens, eggs from the same source, and local fruits and vegetables which have minimal pesticide interventions.
Thank you for this excellent summary!
“I truly don’t believe the exact diet (Mediterranean, vegan, carnivore) matter as much as eating, locally sourced, nutrient dense foods.”
You have hit the proverbial nail on the head my friend! I agree 100% with your statement: don’t you worry, I got you covered on this one as we continue our long journey into lifestyle modification.
The secret of a healthy lifestyle does not lay on fad diets, supplements, nutraceuticals or even FDA approved medicines (except when needed for treatment of established medical condition). The underlying cause of metabolic syndrome and all its associated conditions (i.e., obesity, type 2 diabetes, HTN, fatty liver, etc.) is the systematic erosion on our lifestyle caused by the pressures of modern society.
This series on lifestyle modification is extensive by design (thirteen individual essays in total) because the problem is complex and wide ranging. Unless we develop a full understanding of what the problem is, we have little hope to correct course in our own life. The series contains foundational essays discussing the problem in detail, followed by specific actionable steps that anyone can adopt to correct the problems.
My hope is that this series will help people understand the magnitude of the problem and provide them with easy to adopt strategies to improve their metabolic health going forward.
Thanks for reading and thanks for your thoughtful comment.
I would like you to research and tell us what the additives are chemically and the researched evidence that they cause harm. Every expert just plies the term Ultra Processed Foods. Look at the photograph I’d the supermarket shelves you have shown. From the hundreds of nice coloured bags in the shelves of different snacks, you can just list out 5 or 6 coded additives which are emulsifiers, anti oxidants etc. And the listing will tell you what are they chemically. Like for example glycerol mono stearate ( GMS). And please enlighten us with available information and evidence what are known metabolic downside with that additive and some evidence anecdotes. All we get is motherhood warning statements that they are bad for health. All said and done, 99.5 % by weight of the snack inside is made up of flour, salt, oil, spices which you use everyday as the base for your cooking. They cannot be the culprits.
Dr. Balakrishnan.
Thank you for your comment. Yours is a fair question and one worth addressing in detail.
The reality is that there are approximately between 3,000 - 4,000 known direct industrial food additives, and over 10,000 if you include artificial flavorings and other indirect additives. The FDA maintains a lists of almost 4,000 substances in its public Substances Added to Food database, which covers direct additives. The EAFUS inventory (Everything Added to Food in the United States) lists over 3,000 substances, and there are an additional 3,200+ indirect additives (packaging-related substances that can migrate into food).
As you will surely understand, a comprehensive review of every additive in use would be a regulatory-agency-scale undertaking, but a focused look at the ones that appear most frequently and carry the most evidence of harm is both doable and useful. As per your suggestion I will add this to my list of topics to cover in a future article.
That said, I want to address a few points in your comment, because they reflect assumptions I think many readers share and they're worth getting right.
The concern with ultra-processed foods is not limited to trace additives. You mention that 99.5% of a snack is flour, salt, oil, and spices, the same ingredients you'd use at home. But that's not quite accurate, and this is where ingredient labels become important.
In the USA ingredient labels list components in descending order by weight (not sure if this is the case in India), so the first few ingredients tell you what the product mostly is. When you look at those leading ingredients in many UPFs, you'll often find they are not the versions you'd use at home: refined starches rather than whole grain flour, hydrogenated or interesterified fats rather than natural oil products, added sugars (sometimes under multiple names) in quantities no home cook would use. The processing itself often alters the food matrix in ways that affect how your body absorbs and metabolizes it, independent of any additive.
As for the additives themselves, looking at a single product label and seeing only 5 or 6 of them can make the amounts seem trivial. But most people who regularly consume UPFs aren't eating one product a day, they're eating several across meals and snacks. The same emulsifiers, preservatives, and colorants appear across multiple products, which means cumulative daily intake is far higher than any single label suggests. On top of that, regulatory safety evaluations typically assess additives individually. How a dozen different additives interact when consumed together daily is an area with very little research. That's not a personal claim of proven harm from those interactions, it's an observation that the evidence of safety for real-world consumption patterns simply doesn't exist.
A simple and practical test: read the ingredient list and ask yourself whether the main items are something you keep in your pantry and use regularly in your own cooking. If you find ingredients you wouldn't recognize, can't buy, or would never use at home, you're likely looking at a UPF. This is, in essence, what the NOVA classification captures which I referenced in the original piece.
So while I agree that a closer look at specific additives is valuable and I intend to provide one, the case against UPF does not rest on additives alone. It rests on the totality of what industrial processing does to food: reformulating base ingredients, engineering palatability, and adding compounds that most home kitchens have no use for.
Thanks for your prompt, considered response.
The 80:20, or even 90:10 rule could be applying in food additives also, the UPF ones. It means that 10% of the list would be applicable in 90% of the common items. Two looks, you can whittle down the 2000-3000 list to 100 and then down 20. Then those 20 can be closely looked at. As an exercise, I used to do it for sets of common branded moisturisers and even though each one will carry an ingredient list 20 or 25, you can find that 5-6 would be common and they would be the key components. One can also guess which two are generically similar and can be considered as one. All said and done, some solid information would be available on a few additives and the rest of the common ones we have to go by anecdotal experience. It doesn’t seem like an easy subject to conclude readily. Look at drugs in use. There are reportedly some 2500 molecules known to have been in use in the last 80 odd years of medicinal renaissance. I don’t think all of them underwent the 5-10 year cycle of safety studies including in cohorts. There were other reasonable considerations used to bring many of them on the table. Eventually, the long user experience is the final verdict. By these experiences, one can conclude that not all food additives are bad.
"Two looks, you can whittle down the 2000-3000 list to 100 and then down 20. Then those 20 can be closely looked at. As an exercise, I used to do it for sets of common branded moisturisers and even though each one will carry an ingredient list 20 or 25, you can find that 5-6 would be common and they would be the key components."
Your idea aligns with my general plan: I will research the most commonly used industrial food additives, look among those for the ones that have well documented health impact, and narrow the list to about 25 or so. I do agree this can be useful information for everyone, and something missing from most articles about UPF including my own.
And you are quite correct, there are some general categories among additives such as industrial sweeteners for example, where there are many individual substances used which clearly share the same health concerns and can be treated as one.
I thank you for your thoughtful comment and appreciate you bringing this topic to my attention.
Are canned sardines a problem?
Hi Hamilton.
No, they are not a problem. I eat them with some regularity.
Looking at the ingredient list on the can, they have sardines, water and salt, nothing more. That is by definition a NOVA 3 category (canned fish) and is perfectly fine.
Enjoy!