By Consumer Reports
Unhealthy ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) are industrially manufactured foods, such as chips and packaged cookies. They are typically high in sugar, salt, and fat and often contain a long list of chemical ingredients. A 2024 review of 45 medical studies linked eating a high UPF diet to 32 health conditions, including obesity, cancer, heart disease, and depression.
Nearly three-quarters of the foods in supermarkets fall into the UPF category, including healthy-sounding products like flavored yogurt and packaged whole-wheat bread. Are they really all the same?
Probably not. It’s such a large umbrella, and there’s been a lot of controversy over what UPFs are and whether all of them are equally unhealthy.
How Processed Foods Differ
To see whether there were differences among categories of UPFs, researchers analyzed 30 years of diet data from over 200,000 people. The results showed that overall, those whose diets contained about 46 percent UPFs had an 11 percent higher risk of cardiovascular disease than those whose diets contained less than 18 percent UPFs. But when they looked at different subgroups of UPFs, the findings changed.
Sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats were the main contributors to higher risks of cardiovascular disease. When they excluded those two categories, they saw that the increased risk associated with consuming ultraprocessed foods mostly disappeared. This may be because sodas and deli meat typically contain a lot of added sugars, sodium, or nitrates—ingredients linked to heart disease in previous studies.
“We know that UPFs that pack a lot of calories in a small amount are easier to overconsume, which leads to weight gain and increased diabetes risk,” says Samuel Dicken, PhD, a researcher at the University College London Centre for Obesity Research.
Related Article: Foods to Eat for a Heart-Healthy Diet
Less Is Still Better
Experts say the best approach is making whole and minimally processed foods the bulk of your diet. Examples of minimally processed foods include canned beans and fish, pasta, frozen fruits and vegetables, and homemade meals. The most important thing to focus on is reducing or eliminating the most worrying UPFs (like sodas and deli meat) since they are the worst offenders.
*This is a condensed version of a Consumer Reports story from January 2025. Visit ConsumerReports.org for the full story.