You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey everybody, it's Mary Al.

Next time you're at the supermarket,

pick up some packaged foods

and look over the ingredient list.

You'll start to notice a lot of the same things.

High levels of salt and fat, added sugars,

added colorings, added flavorings,

hydrolyzed protein, isolate,

high fructose corn, syrup, bulking agents,

like maltodextrin, for instance.

These are all sort of the types of ingredients

you'd see in an ultra-processed food.

Carajinin, you know, those kinds of things.

That's Maria Godoy, a health correspondent at NPR.

She's been reporting on the health effects

of ultra-processed, industrially-made foods.

These are foods that are made with ingredients derived

from foods and then you reassemble them to create a product

that's tasty, cheap, convenient, and shelf-stable,

which means they last a long time.

And as you may have noticed,

...