Not All Ultra-Processed Foods Are Created Equal

Nov 18

Which treats in your pantry would hold up under scientific scrutiny?

Here’s an example: Reese’s Peanut Butter lovers—brace yourselves. That jar ranks high risk. In the UK, Sun-Pat scores medium. Pip & Nut? No risk at all.

My dear nutrition-aware but convenience-driven shoppers, if there were a master list ranking processed foods by real risk, you’d check it before your next grocery run. So would I.

Guess what…

That database exists, but understandably, it’s not instantly available to everyone.

Last week, a ZOE podcast episode pulled me in. Dr. Sarah Berry, a nutrition scientist at King’s College London, was unpacking her research on ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Later in the episode, she dismantled a few things I thought I knew.

The headline stat you’ve heard—that 65% of the foods in your supermarket are UPFs—isn’t wrong, but it’s misleading. It treats all UPFs as equal offenders. Berry’s team found only 20–25% fall into the genuinely high-risk bracket.

To separate the harmless from the harmful, her lab built a scoring system with four categories—high, medium, low, and no risk—based on three measures:

• Additives and emulsifiers graded by emerging evidence on metabolic and gut health.
• Energy intake rate, or how quickly calories go down once you start eating.
• Hyper-palatability, the engineering of flavors to hit the “bliss point” that drives overeating.

It’s not all bad news. Some UPFs keep fiber and nutrients intact. Some use beneficial additives, like prebiotic inulin. Others hold their structure in ways that help you feel full longer.

Berry’s point: not all convenience foods deserve the same reputation. Context matters. Risk is a spectrum. The smarter play for nutrition science isn’t blanket bans—it’s precision. Tools that let you weigh the data before you weigh your options.

If her database were public, we could all shop with more than marketing slogans and front-label claims. Until then, it’s guesswork—one grocery trip at a time.

So… Nope. That episode didn’t give me a happy ending. But it gave me a perspective worth hearing.

If this piqued your interest as well, here’s the link to that episode:
https://lnkd.in/g8edJqYb