UK officials have dismissed recent concerns that highly processed food, also known as ultra-processed food (UPF), is automatically unhealthy because of the way that it is made or its artificial ingredients.
The current way that the UK and most other countries assess the nutritional value of foods – which is generally by how much fat, salt, sugar and calories they contain – remains the best approach for achieving a healthy diet, said a panel of scientists at a press conference on 27 September.
They also warned that people who cut out all ultra-processed foods could make their diets more unhealthy, for instance if they avoid foods such as low-sugar drinks and yogurts, low-fat spreads and wholemeal breads and cereals. “We need to be driven by the science and not have this knee-jerk reaction that treats [all UPF] the same when we clearly know that everything is not the same,” said , chief scientific adviser at the UK’s Food Standards Agency.
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Concerns about processed foods have been growing for some time, but it is still unclear whether there is something uniquely bad about them or whether they just tend to be higher in fat, sugar and so on. The issue has come into focus this year after Chris van Tulleken, a doctor and TV presenter, published a book on the subject called Ultra-Processed People: Why do we all eat stuff that isn’t food… and why can’t we stop?
Van Tulleken has called for more countries to adopt , where people are advised to prioritise eating whole foods and homemade meals, and avoid eating factory-made foods.
On 27 September, the UK’s Science Media Centre held a press conference where researchers from various nutrition organisations rejected this proposed new food classification system. “We absolutely need foods to be processed so that we can feed the world,” said at the University of Leeds, UK, who is a member of the British Nutrition Foundation. “Yes, much UPF food is high in fat, sugar and salt. But actually, it’s likely that it’s those nutrients rather than anything else [that] have an impact on health.”
May said that the category of UPF includes products that are both healthy and unhealthy. “It’s important we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here. There are many components that have a very important role to play in nutrition and in safety,” he said.
Benefits of food processing include the use of preservatives that make food last longer and artificial sweeteners that help people reduce their sugar intake, said May. Other examples of processed foods that can be beneficial include baby food, infant formula milk and cereals and breads fortified with vitamins and minerals, said the panel.
May added, however, that van Tulleken’s book had been helpful for getting the public more interested in diet. “We know that people are mystified about a huge number of aspects of their food. Anything that helps people think carefully about their diets is useful.”
The UK’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) published a in July that concluded the studies linking UPF with poor health could simply be down to these foods being high in saturated fat, sugar and salt.
“SACN is absolutely concerned about the association between highly processed foods with a range of adverse health outcomes. However, we think it’s unclear whether the associations are due to the nutritional characteristics of the food or whether there’s any independent effect of the processing,” said Ian Young, head of SACN. “We intend to maintain this on a watching brief and review again, as further evidence emerges.”
But van Tulleken says that the evidence against UPF is extremely robust. “There is an increasing amount of science describing the many ways in which UPF affects the human body,” he says. “The destruction of the food structure by industrial processing means that UPF is, in general, soft. This means you eat it fast, which means you eat far more calories per minute and don’t feel full until long after you’ve finished.”
