I think focusing on the "processed" part of what's so damaging about these "ultra processed foods" is a bit of a red herring. The issue is engineered food. Re

I think focusing on the "processed" part of what's so damaging about these "ultra processed foods" is a bit of a red herring. The issue is engineered food. Ready to eat, convenient, snacks and meals produced by these major food conglomerates that have invested literally billions of dollars into food research to make the food as addictive as possible, as shelf stable as possible, and as cheap as possible to manufacture. A growing body of research has correlated the portion of a nation's diet filled by these kinds of foods to the rise of obesity there in a trend seen across the globe. Things like vitamin supplements and protein powders could also be considered ultra processed consumables/foods, but those are products that have been engineered to make it easier to get more of that vitamin or protein respectively into one's diet. The foods that are really at the root of the issue here are products that have been engineered for one purpose alone, profit, to get you to eat more of them. The evidence suggests that humans have gotten so good at this, engineering foods to make you want to eat more of them, that it appears to hijack our natural system of hunger response which tells us to stop eating when we've had enough, leading to weight gain. There isn't evidence for this yet, but I highly suspect the companies involved know this and may have purposefully muddied the waters about the cause of rising obesity, pushing claims that it's caused by people living too sedentary of lives, or people lacking discipline and self control, to shift blame of their negligence and exploitation to the very victims of their crimes.