Ultra-processed foods (or UPFs) have become a normal part of daily life, particularly in countries like the US, Canada, and the UK, where packed schedules pretty much dictate what ends up on the table. Frozen meals, sugary drinks, and packaged snacks are hard to avoid — they are cheap, easy to keep around, and advertised at every turn. And the research piling up around them is not exactly reassuring — eating a lot of these products appears to be connected to a pretty long list of health problems.
UPFs are essentially industrial food products that go far beyond basic processing like freezing or canning. Under the NOVA classification system, they typically contain five or more ingredients — including preservatives, emulsifiers, artificial flavors, and sweeteners that most people do not keep anywhere near their own kitchens.
UPFs really took off in the 20th century when food companies figured out how to mass-produce them and make them last forever on the shelf. And then, our busy lives, the move to cities, and the explosion of supermarkets and fast-food joints just made these things even more popular. People keep buying them because they are convenient, affordable, heavily promoted, and honestly, engineered to taste good. And we are eating a lot of them.
The non-profit EuroHealthNet estimates UPFs account for roughly 27% of daily energy intake across Europe, ranging from around 10 to 14% in Southern Europe to more than 50% in parts of Northern and Western Europe. Not to be outdone, the US Centers for Disease Control says UPFs make up about 62% of daily calories for young people and 53% for adults. In fact, research from Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute shows 70% of products on US grocery store shelves are ultra-processed.
The companies that benefit most from all of this are large global food and beverage corporations — Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, and others like them, along with their investors. They keep costs down by leaning on cheap commodity crops like corn, wheat, and soy, and swapping out more expensive ingredients for synthetic ones. Food scientists then fine-tune these products to hit what the industry calls a “bliss point” — a precise combination of sugar, salt, and fat that makes the food so appealing it overrides the body’s natural sense of fullness, keeping people reaching for more.
These are the kinds of practices that have led San Francisco to file a landmark lawsuit against ten major food manufacturers, including Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz, Nestlé, PepsiCo, and General Mills. The suit claims these companies knowingly designed and marketed addictive, unhealthy products and draws direct comparisons to the tactics once used by the tobacco industry — alleging they helped fuel chronic disease, hid health risks, and deliberately targeted children.
Of course, the food industry has pushed back. Company representatives have argued there is no universally agreed-upon scientific definition of ultra-processed foods and cautioned against treating all processed products as automatically harmful. Industry groups have also said zeroing in on how food is processed overlooks other important factors like nutritional content, personal lifestyle, and individual choice.
The money trail does not end at the factory gate either. Ad agencies, raw material suppliers, and the healthcare industry all have a stake in the way things are currently set up. As The Lancet series on ultra-processed foods made clear, the global food system is largely structured around generating profit — and keeping people healthy over the long term has never really been the priority.
