[_aavaa_]

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.

[margalabargala]

> 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.