[the__alchemist]

This is akin to pitbulls and porn: You know it when you see it, despite the existence of ambiguous cases. I bring this up because your call to specifics is useuful in general. In this case: There are gray areas, but in most cases, it's a useful heuristic. If your food comes in a bright-colored box, advertises as containing "Real [cheese|fruit|etc]" and or is branded with the word "flavor", "Ultra-processed" is a useful categorization.

If your food is something like "Chicken breast", "whole wheat flour" or "Green onions", it's not.

You will be able to find many ambiguous cases, at which point the categorization ceases to become useful. I do not believe this means categorization isn't useful in general.

[breezybottom]

It may be useful to you as a consumer as a way of avoiding sugar, fat, or whatever it is you think is unhealthy. Even that is dubious. But it's completely useless scientifically. There's no theoretical link between brightly colored boxes and weight gain. As you just admitted, that's only a proxy for something else you care about.

[enragedcacti]

You'd love my new food category. It's called Ultra-Priced Foods, and it argues that the more expensive something is, the better it is for you. Sure, there might be some exceptions, but overall price is a quite effective proxy for high quality ingredients.

Oh, you don't have unlimited money? Some people don't have unlimited time or capability to prepare home-cooked meals constantly. It would behoove anti-UPF advocates to design a system that more accurately describes nutritional value of "UPFs" so people can make informed decisions within the constraints of their life.

[the__alchemist]

I don't buy it. If there are time-available constraints, do grocery delivery instead of takeaway, or buy good stuff instead of bottom-feeder stuff at the store. There are so many low/no-prep food options. I think the "Most people are too poor to eat things other than fast foot and flavor-blast Syrup chips" is a lie.

[enragedcacti]

I'm glad we are finally getting some good, solid guidance around UPFs. Hey everyone, just buy "good stuff"!

while it is quite funny how you turned around my "just spend way more money" advice as an actual suggestion, it really isn't particularly helpful because UPFs are a much, much broader category than "flavor-blasted" type products. A huge number of low/no-prep options are UPF, you just don't think so because they don't scan as unhealthy. It gets us back to the main problem that it's all basically just vibes, which is why you don't see the issue that your honest-to-god advice was to just buy good stuff instead of buying bad stuff. Why not just cut to the chase and have an Ultra-Bad Foods categorization?

[toilet]

You can buy rice, beans and soy granulate in bulk and cook a chili in an hour that feeds a family for two days for the price of like a happy meal at McDonalds.

[the__alchemist]

You cast doubt on using categorization because it has ambiguity. I think this is misleading and dishonest, which is why I am being direct. It is FUD.

[enragedcacti]

Ambiguity is inevitable in something as complicated as nutrition. I'm casting doubt on this specific categorization for being a poor proxy for healthiness and for completely ignoring salient factors that drive nutrition choices. Many single parents would love the opportunity to buy and cook raw ingredients for their kids every night, but cost and time makes that not an option for many. A good categorization system would accommodate this by e.g. distinguishing between whole grain bread with preservatives and wonder bread. UPF is an all or nothing categorization that is only helpful if you already have a conception of whats healthy and filter your choices through that while calling it UPF.

> I think this is misleading and dishonest, which is why I am being direct.

Good save, everyone reading this totally thinks that's what you were doing and not just showing your whole ass while making my point for me.