New studies say ultraprocessed foods seen as global public health threat

From grocery shelves to school cafeterias worldwide, ultraprocessed foods have become the norm rather than the exception. Their rise comes at a cost: higher rates of obesity and chronic disease, fractured cultural food identities and weakened local producers.

A new three-paper series in the Lancet journal, co-authored by 43 global experts including University of Michigan psychologist Ashley Gearhardt suggests that improving diets can't solely rely on consumer behavior change. It requires coordinated global policies to legislate reductions of ultraprocessed food production, marketing and consumption, the analyses indicated.

The series shows that the food problem is systemic, driven by corporate interests, not nutrition or sustainability.

"When people find they can’t stop eating certain ultraprocessed foods even when they want to, that isn’t a failure of willpower," Gearhardt said. "It reflects products that have been deliberately designed to hijack the brain’s reward systems. The result is harm to both mental and physical health on a massive scale."

The series offered the following key findings:

• Meta-analyses found a diet high in ultraprocessed food is associated with increased risk of 12 health conditions including overweight/obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, depressive symptoms, heart, kidney and gastrointestinal diseases, as well as premature death from all causes.
• Policies to reduce high fat, sugar and salt are important, but legislation must also specifically target ultraprocessed foods while improving easy access to subsidised healthy alternatives.
  • Reformulation is not the solution. Clear limits on these food ingredients (e.g. sweeteners and emulsifiers) in addition to fat, sugar and salt should be set to prevent unhealthy ingredient substitutions.
  • The required concrete food environment policies to curb ultraprocessed food consumption include banning them in public institutions (schools, hospitals), enforcement of strong marketing restrictions (especially to children, on digital media and at the brand level) and consideration of limits to ultraprocessed food sales/shelf space.
• Policies are also needed to expand access to fresh foods. Taxes on selected ultraprocessed foods can be used to fund fresh-food subsidies for low-income households, affordable and convenient fresh options in supermarkets and fast-food restaurants, and potable drinking water infrastructure.
• Global corporations—not a lack of individual willpower—are driving the rise of ultraprocessed foods. They use cheap ingredients and industrial manufacturing technologies to minimise cost, and intensive marketing and highly palatable product designs to drive consumption. Global UPF sales are now $1.9 trillion.

Gearhardt points to similar tactics by ultraprocessed food companies with what transpired with tobacco companies. Both used industrial science to engineer products that are hard to resist, shaped policy and public opinion to protect profits, and targeted children to build lifelong consumers, she said. 

"What the tobacco industry once did to a leaf—chemically refining and flavoring it to intensify its pull—these food corporations have done to corn, potatoes and wheat," Gearhardt said. "The result is a food supply dominated by products designed not to nourish us, but to keep us coming back for more."

Society, she said, needs a food system built "around nutritious, minimally processed food that sustains and restores us, not one that profits from keeping people hooked and unhealthy."

"Protecting children and consumers from predatory design should be a public health priority, just as it eventually became with tobacco," she said.

Study Link