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by zeech 148 days ago
This article equates ultraprocessed foods and hyperpalatable foods (foods designed to make people want to eat them more). While many hyperpalatable foods are classified as ultraprocessed, simply being hyperpalatable does not mean it's ultraprocessed.

Worth noting that the Nova food classificationvsysten (which this article references) completely disregards the actual nutritional content of foods.

For a good primer on a lot of the misconceptions around UPFs, check out [0].

[0] https://www.harvardmagazine.com/research/harvard-ultraproces...

1 comments

Food is ultraprocessed to make it cheaper, more palatable, or both. So while the definitions are orthogonal the goals align.
I agree that many hyperpalatable foods are ultraprocessed so that they can be made more cheaply, but I don't think that's reason enough to say that the, uh, process of processing foods is entirely aligned with the concept of hyperpalatability.
It also be processed to remove ingredients that can be sold at a higher price when used in another way.