All prospective population studies to date on ultra-processed food consumption and weight gain

have found that the more ultra-processed foods people eat, the more likely they are to become overweight or obese.

Why might that be the case?

One of the reasons people tend to over-consume ultra-processed foods, more than less processed foods,

may be a change in texture.

If you feed people a so-called soft rice salad made with creamy risota rice and boiled vegetables,

they end up eating 17 percent more calories than when given the same salad made

with regular rice and raw vegetables.

Even just swapping a hard hamburger bun for a soft one can make a difference.

However, this is the opposite of what big food tends to dish out for us.

The food industry processes products for maximum consumption rate.

They don't call it fast food for nothing.

As opposed to those made in a factory, foods that grow tend to be slow.

Thanks in part to the fiber content of whole healthy plant foods,

the default eating rate of more healthful foods just tends to be slower naturally.

Though there are certainly exceptions like caramel toffee, highly processed foods tend to be

consumed quicker. There can be a hundredfold difference in consumption between the fastest and

slowest foods. You could consume an entire 2,000 daily calorie allotments worth of chocolate

milk in four minutes,

whereas it would take more than six straight hours to chew through that many raw carrots.

Based on this particular sampling of 45 foods, though, it doesn't look like ultra-processed

foods are consumed any faster than less processed foods, but based on analysis of hundreds of

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