"ultra processed food" is the perfect grifter slogan: * There's a grain of truth in it. Chemically designing food gives the opportunity to reduce costs by maki

"ultra processed food" is the perfect grifter slogan: * There's a grain of truth in it. Chemically designing food gives the opportunity to reduce costs by making it less healthy, and food producers should be held to account. We need better ways to quantify and assure the health value of food products. However- * The term "UPF" is vague, making it not useful for the individual. This provides great opportunities for grifters to a) publish scary clickbait and b) set themselves up as an authority on what food or is not UPF * It provides the perfect opportunity for status signalling, as wealthier people can invest money or time in artisanally produced or prepared food. * It provides an opportunity for low efficiency producers to sell food as "less processed" at a high markup, irrespective of whether it is more healthy The population is too large to rely on food produced or prepared artisanally, unless possibly they prepare it themselves out of raw ingredients. But giving up on economic specialism in the area of food preparation would be huge cost on society. Do we really believe that our economic system is incapable of enforcing the evaluation and optimization of the health value of food products? That would be a really basic failure.