What's an Ultra-Processed Food?

tl;dr: The Devil's in the details. Technically, almost everything we eat is a processed food, but that's obviously not a helpful definition.

X post.

The study he was announcing was this:

“Effect of Ultra-processed Versus Unprocessed Diets on Energy Metabolism”

“This is a randomized crossover study of adult volunteers to determine the health effects of four different diets varying in non-beverage energy density, hyperpalatable foods, as well as the degree, extent, and purpose of processing according to the NOVA classification system.”

I replied:

“I understand why you are doing it (consistency with prior work) but it's disappointing that you are using the NOVA classification again... What comes out of this plant is ultra-processed, but not according to NOVA.”

It occurs to me that most of the items in the NOVA processed list can be made in one's kitchen, using things one might expect to find in a kitchen.

(OK, a hammer might be in the garage!)