How Ultra-Processed Foods Are Taking Over Our Diets and Ruining Our Health

Ultra-Processed Foods Have Lots of Calories and Few Nutrients

Ultra-processed foods are everywhere — from sodas and chips to frozen meals and packaged breads. They are not “real food", they are industrial products made by breaking down natural foods into substances like sugars, oils, starches, and proteins, then reformulating them with additives, colors, and flavorings to make them appealing, cheap, and long-lasting.

These foods are designed to be convenient, tasty, and highly profitable to the food manufacturing industry. They are not made to nourish our bodies, and they come with serious health risks.

What Counts as Ultra-Processed Food?

Ultra-processed foods include: Drinks: sodas, energy drinks, sweetened teas

Snacks & treats: chips, cookies, candy, ice cream.

Convenience meals: frozen pizzas, microwave dinners, instant soups, flavored oatmeal

Processed meats: hot dogs, chicken nuggets, fish sticks, sausages.

Mass-produced baked goods: packaged breads, pastries, cakes, sweetened cereals, protein bars, shakes, and powders.

These products contain ingredients you would never use in your own kitchen — things like emulsifiers, hydrogenated oils, flavor enhancers, and food colorings. These foods are high in calories, but low in nutritional value. They can literally make you fat while you are also under-nourished since you body is not getting the nutrients it needs to stay healthy.

Why They’re So Hard to Resist

Ultra-processed foods are carefully engineered to hit what scientists call the “bliss point” — the perfect mix of sugar, fat, and salt that makes food irresistible and encourages overeating.

These foods are aggressively marketed in bright packaging, ads targeting children, and massive ad budgets to make them see fun and wholesome.

Availability: they dominate supermarket shelves and fast-food outlets. As a result, ultra-processed foods are displacing traditional, home-cooked meals made with fresh ingredients.

How They Affect Our Health

Research links ultra-processed food consumption to a wide range of health problems, including: Obesity, Type 2 diabetes, Heart disease and stroke, Certain cancers, Depression and anxiety, and last but not least, Increased overall risk of early death.

Processed foods also harm gut health. Because they lack fiber, they don’t feed the beneficial microbes in our intestines. Additives like emulsifiers may even disrupt the gut barrier, trigger inflammation, and cause digestive discomfort.

Maintaining a healthy gut biome and balanced blood sugar levels are absolutely necessary for you to live a healthy, energetic life. That is why my wife and I are so focused on helping people improve their gut health and regulate their blood sugar levels. This is a huge problem in the United States where almost 50% of the adult population has either pre-diabetes or diabetes. If you need help getting control of your diet, your sugar intake or your metabolic health, you can reach out to us. You can also follow us on social media and check our website for new posts.

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