You’re Probably Eating More Ultra-Processed Foods Than You Think

KQED's Forum

KQED

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Americans are getting more and more of our calories from ultra-processed foods. One study found that more than half of our diets consist of foods that contain ingredients with no nutritional value including sports drinks, wheat bread, flavored yogurt, and frozen pizza. Studies have shown ultra-processed foods can lead to poor health outcomes from obesity and cancer to anxiety. But the products that shoppers should steer clear of can be hard to detect. They are often marketed as healthy options and some health experts say they are not all bad. We dig into the rise of ultra-processed foods, what they might mean for our health and how to spot them on grocery shelves. Guests: Alice Callahan, nutrition reporter, The New York Times Dr. Uma Naidoo, psychiatrist, chef, and nutritionist; She is the author of "This Is Your Brain on Food" and "Calm Your Mind with Food." Laurel Bristow, host of Health Wanted, WABE Public Radio in Atlanta and NPR; She is also associate director of audience development for the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for Forum comes from Rancho La Puerta, a wellness resort in Baja, California, just an hour from San Diego.
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0:44.6	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:00.0	Here's a wild fact.
1:02.0	More than half the calories that Americans consume comes in the form of ultra-processed foods,
1:08.0	a category that's emerged over the last couple of decades to denote foods that are
1:11.6	basically only created by industrial food companies. In the last couple of years, variety of
1:17.0	health conditions have been linked to diet's high in these kinds of additive-rich foods in
1:21.9	addition to their role in the obesity epidemic. The question is, are these foods really categorically
1:27.4	different from other
1:28.3	things Americans eat? Is it just their sugary and salty and fatty or does the actual
1:33.0	processing, the technology of it really matter? We'll talk about it all that's coming up next
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