Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast. I'm your host, Monica Rinegal, and over

the course of my decades in the nutrition field. I've seen a lot of dietary villains

come and go and come again. I'm thinking about fat, carbs, meat, sugar, but the villain

of the moment is definitely ultra-processed foods, and by proxy, the food manufacturers

who produce them. I've argued in the past that processed is really too broad a brush

to apply. We really need to take into consideration what the purpose of the processing is before

we demonize a food as being too processed. And we also need to think about how a given

processed food functions in our diet before we decide whether or not it can be allowed

to stay. Now, part of the problem with this whole discussion is that there isn't a single

definition or set of criteria for what constitutes processed food. For better or worse, the

NOVA classification seems to be emerging as the most widely used system, especially in

nutrition research. Now, I have talked in previous episodes about some of the limitations

of the NOVA classification. For one thing, it's difficult even for nutrition professionals

to decide accurately what category a given food falls into. And secondly, a lot of foods

that I certainly think of as helpful are considered ultra-processed in the NOVA classification system.

And all of this is very relevant at the moment because the dietary guidelines for Americans

are due to be updated again. And one of the questions that the scientific advisory committee

is going to be tackling this time around is the relationship between ultra-processed foods

and health. And they seem specifically interested in things like whether or not they contribute

to rates of overweight and obesity, as opposed to other sorts of health outcomes. Joining

me to talk about all of this is Dr. Julie Hess. Dr. Hess is a research nutritionist with

the USDA's Human Nutrition Research Center in Grand Forks, North Dakota. And her research

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