I'm a scientist — one ultra-processed food isn't as bad as people tell you

Fast food including hot dogs, burgers and fries
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A scientist says there is one ultra-processed food that is "probably not as bad for you as some people make it out to be".

There is growing concern among scientists and nutritionists that ultra-processed food is having a serious impact on our health. Many believe it is contributing heavily to soaring obesity levels and to chronic diseases like diabetes, inflammation and heart disease. Ultra-processed food (often shortened to UPF) makes up a major percentage of the average diet in the USA and UK and is growing in other countries too. For teenagers in the USA and UK, it can make up as much as 80% of their diet. You can read what happened when I cut out UPF from my diet for a year here.

Some of the most common ultra-processed foods (or UPFs) are:

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  • packaged bread

  • breakfast cereals and granola

  • flavoured yoghurt

  • chocolate, biscuits and crisps

  • energy and granola bars

  • fizzy drinks

  • microwave ready meals

These foods will often be high in added sugar, fat or salt (or a combination of all three), as well as chemicals, and subject to industrial processing techniques. They will also contain things like emulsifiers, stabilisers, dyes, flavour enhancers and gums, all chemicals that many scientists are becoming increasingly concerned about. Zoe founder Professor Tim Spector, for example, says UPFs and the ingredients in them, can harm the gut microbiome, which scientists believe is a fundamental part of your overall health.

To understand simply what constitutes ultra-processed food, this definition from Dr Chris Van Tulleken — an infectious diseases doctor at University College London, BBC science presenter and New York Times bestselling author — is probably best: "If it's wrapped in plastic and it contains at least one ingredient that you don't typically find in a domestic kitchen, then it's ultra-processed food."

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However, Giles Yeo, a geneticist and professor of molecular neuroendocrinology at the University of Cambridge and honorary president of the British Dietetic Association whose research focuses on the influence of genes on eating behaviour and body weight, says there might be one UPF which has a worse reputation than it deserves — and it's a big one.

Speaking on the Zoe podcast, Prof Yeo said: "The term ultra-processed foods, I still think, is too broad a church. There are a lot of foods I think we should eat less of. But I think the umbrella is so big, it sort of sweeps in a bunch of foods that probably don't need to be there.

"If you put natural yogurt with a bit of jam in it, suddenly it becomes ultra-processed. Now there are completely ultra-processed foods. But I think there are some foods that sort of slip in under the net.

"Supermarket bread, taste aside, is still made largely of flour, salt, yeast and some water. And it's probably not as bad for you as some people make it out to be. So I think we do need to be careful: we want to make sure we eat less of certain things, and we want to quantify that better, so that we don't demonise all the foods. But undoubtedly it is true that the majority of ultra-processed foods we should be eating less of."