Do you genuinely not understand the difference between "tends to be unhealthy" and "is always 100% unhealthy"? Do you not understand how the classification is useful even if it contains exceptions?
You're missing that from the conversation, where myself and others have stated it repeatedly, not from the wikipedia page.
> How is the food unhealthy? By having lots of fats?
Yes.
> Or high salt?
Yes, that too.
> Or high sugar?
Yes, very much this.
> Is it perhaps the ingredients that make it unhealthy?
Also true. For example: while preservatives like sodium benzoate are not used in unhealthy quantities in any individual item of food, a diet high in ultraprocessed foods can consume unsafe levels.
Sure my point is that what we’re actually talking about is the ingredients themselves, not how they’re processed. Except it’s through this roundabout way; if your worry is sodium benzoate, it doesn’t matter if the food was extruded, deep fried, or emulsified, all that matters is if it has sodium benzoate.
And we don’t need a proxy for that. We need proper labelling of ingredients.
> if your worry is sodium benzoate, it doesn’t matter if the food was extruded, deep fried, or emulsified, all that matters is if it has sodium benzoate.
Sure, but my worry isn't just sodium benzoate. It's also deep frying, or lots of sugar, or just being vacuously caloric while not providing saiety.
There are a lot of different things done to foods that tend to make them variously unhealthy to consume in quantity, a problem not shared by, say, cucumber or carrots. "Ultra-processed" is a useful linguistic catch all for these.
Some people lack the language skills to deal with terms that are not rigorously defined from a scientific sense, which honestly speaks to a failure of the education system rather than the term being a problem.
I have no idea what you're trying to say here. What it sounds like you're saying is that it is possible for processing to make a product unhealthy, and unlikely for processing to make a product more healthy.
What other people are saying is that this communicates almost nothing. What it does is allow people who are doing very bizarre things to food to hide among people who are doing pretty well known, well-tested, and ancient things to food. It's literally an argument to ignore the specifics, it's an argument for ignorance.
Certainly your first sentence is true. And you're right; what you said you think I said, communicates almost nothing. If it were what I were saying, it would be an argument for ignorance.
Do you understand that the classification is not based on healthy/unhealthy but based on how much “processing” was done to the food?