[fabbbbb]

Unfortunately there seems to be no good aligned definition of what (highly) processed food is. 1,2

Whole grain bread or infant formula can be “highly processed” despite very healthy.

In the end someone else cooks for you and packages it. They can cook healthy or not or in between, add a lot of salt or little, .. as always it’s more complex.

1: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-022-01099-1

2 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nutrition-research-r...

[frutiger]

People who complain about “processed foods” generally have a basic misunderstanding of chemical/biochemical processes and energy gradients or activation energies.

Ultimately, everything is highly processed or we’d be eating rocks. The magnificent manufacturing line in animal or even plant cells is one of the most processed things at the finest molecular level that we know!

[lm28469]

That's not really what we're talking about here though. An apple isn't the same as an apple juice which isn't the same as an apple flavored candy, even you can appreciate the difference of processing in these simple examples.

A slab of beef isn't the same as a "burger patty*" where the meat is coming from 54 different pigs, including cartilages, tendons, skin &co and contains 12 additives coming from the petrochemical industry.

The same applies to vegetarians/vegan stuff, you can make a patty from beans at home with like 3 ingredients, or buy ready made patties containing hydrogenated trans fats, bad additives, food coloring, &c.

[escapedmoose]

You can argue the semantics all you want, but “highly processed foods”, despite the difficulty/ambiguity in defining them, tend to have both a higher calorie density and are proven to nudge people to consume more, vs. “whole foods” (i.e. minimally modified fruits, veggies, cooked whole meats, etc.). When you treat the “highly processed” label as a rule of thumb allowing for some ambiguity in the definition, and you compare people who eat processed vs. whole foods, you find that the whole foods group is overwhelmingly fitter.

[nonethewiser]

In what sense is an ear of corn highly processed? Is the same sense in which a hot dog is highly processed?

[maerF0x0]

And yet we find that the foods that most people can intuitively label as "processed" come with lower satiety per calorie, unfavorable effects on blood sugar, and lower micro nutrient density per calorie. There are definitely outliers, but obvious ones are Wonderbread vs Whole grain high fiber breads (like Daves 21 grain or ezekiel bread), American cheese vs Sliced medium cheddar, even things like Sweetened apple sauce vs an Apple, White rice versus brown or "wild rice"

[parliament32]

> In the end someone else cooks for you and packages it.

I think someone else cooking for you isn't the problem, the problem is at "packages it". Because, when you cook something at home, it's good for a few days to a week -- but food processors effectively always need various additives to keep the food shelf-stable for long enough for it to go factory -> warehouse -> store -> your house -> your meal. There are definitely exceptions (eg raisins are dried grapes, end of story) but generally this is the problem.

> Whole grain bread... very healthy.

Are you sure? Ever noticed how when you bake bread at home, it's basically 4 days on the counter before it's inedible, right? Yet commercial bread lasts for weeks.. ever wondered why that is?

As for processed food in general, I could be wrong, but my mental exercise goes along the lines of "would my great-grandma know what this is?" Eggs, butter, milk, fruits, vegetables, flour, rice, meat, fish, etc etc. But if it has an ingredients list and a nutrition label.. probably best to avoid making it a staple of your diet. Yes, I get it, cooking is a pain in the ass and everyone hates "the dinner problem", but IMO it's worth it for your health.

[anonzzzies]

4 days... we bake bread from different grains: it's barely edible after 24 hours. But that is how we do it: bake a loaf early morning, eat what we need, give the rest to the animals. Just like my grandparents did.

I don't get the cooking pain or dinner problem anyway nor do I know anyone irl who has that luckily. I hear it online sometimes and then I check their profile and it becomes clear why.

[2001zhaozhao]

I think "highly processed foods are bad" is best seen as a general rule and no more than that. However, it is a good general rule and following it is probably the easiest way for people to eat healthy.

In general, the more processing steps involved, the more things companies can do to make the food more delicious, cheaper to produce, etc., at the expense of customers' health. There is also a significant correlation between "highly processed food" and "contains way too much refined grains and oil".

However, it's absolutely possible to process the food heavily and add lots of ingredients and still maintain a healthy food if you actually care about the customer's wellbeing. It would just result in a product that is less competitive in the short term, so companies have little to no incentive to do it.

[fabbbbb]

Totally there’s correlation, and to some extent causality. And it’s mostly right. But it’s also wrong. You can pick healthy packaged food in the supermarket. Durability doesn’t require additives in many cases.

Mainly, it will be very hard to change the cooking habits of people in this sense. Chopping your own vegetables is much harder than buying the right (processed) food that doesn’t change anything else about your habits. It sounds super “free” - I doubt it will have large scale impact on the US average diet. Better regulate your food.

[jaksmit]

what gave you the idea that infant formula is "very healthy". definitely not the case for 99% of infant formula in the USA, it's full of canola oil and crap

[nonethewiser]

Kennedy is targeting baby formula.

> Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has directed the Food and Drug Administration to review the nutrients and other ingredients in infant formula, which fills the bottles of millions of American babies. The effort, dubbed “Operation Stork Speed,“ is the first deep look at the ingredients since 1998.

> “The FDA will use all resources and authorities at its disposal to make sure infant formula products are safe and wholesome for the families and children who rely on them,” Kennedy said.

https://news.wttw.com/2025/06/03/kennedy-has-ordered-review-...

[elevation]

I once looked at the ingredients of the baby formula product and was shocked to see some of them list high fructose corn syrup as the first ingredient. It seems like being forced to spending the first year of your life primarily feeding on industrially refined sugars is worth investigating as a cause of metabolic ills developed later in life.

[sva_]

They can also be a machine that might add a non-negligible amount of mineral oils and possibly other stuff to your food. The guideline to use should be that the ingredient list should be as short as possible. If it has more than 5 ingredients, that's already incredibly suspicious in my opinion. The problem is that some stuff (like a mineral oil contamination) doesn't even have to be declared on the ingredient list.

For example, normal simple bread should only have 4 or maybe 5 ingredients.

[grvdrm]

This is my personal approach too. I stock things with fewest number of ingredients. Example that comes to mind: RXBar might be UPF but there’s not much in it. Compared to your average name brand protein bar or granola bar.

[doctorpangloss]

besides being loud in the media and policy, does it matter?

to keep this focused on hacker news. this is like asking the programming community to solve "some intractable social problem," and then sometimes you get an answer, "well, what we need is, a new kind of open source license."

disputes over guidelines and the meaning of highly processed, outside the academic humanities context, is kind of pointless right? if you are talking about cultural influence - you can't coerce people to eat (or not eat) something in this country, so cultural influence is the main lever government can pull regarding food - the answer to everything is, "What does Ja Rule think?" (https://www.okayplayer.com/dave-chappelles-ja-rule-joke-is-h...) that is, what do celebrities say and do? And that's why we're at where we are at, the celebrities are now "running" the HHS.

There's a definition for highly processed food, it's whatever Ja Rule says it is. Are you getting it?

[fabbbbb]

Not sure I do, but to try, this is calling for a culture of science, education and differentiation, which I thought this is. Against black and white simplifications that don’t enlighten anyone but foster extremes.

Not all JavaScript code is bad, nor is all AI-generated code bad (neither good).

We see this black and white simplification all over the place, no trade offs desired anymore. We pick a bad characteristic about a (new) habit product food or technology and that’s enough to render the whole thing inferior.

There is good tries with nutrition transparency in some EU countries, as an example for education around food.

if people can and want to understand it, they can make good choices.

Maybe the US isn’t ready or wishing for such level of education and freedom. Even some EU countries are not.

[sjw987]

I doubt the issue is with processed food. Basically everything we eat is processed (even fruit and veg is selectively bred and has been for decades if not centuries). Bread and pasta is fine.

Ultra-processed is where all of our issues are coming from. If you can't identify ingredients in something, or you see e-numbers, emulsifiers and such, it's UPF. Essentially any fast food, branded items, ready meals or heavily plastic wrapped long-shelf life stuff.

Cognitive decline and overweight conditions have risen in line with the uptake of UPF. A 10% increase in UPF leads to 25% increase in the chance of dementia. UPF lead to overeating, and the way they are processed causes them to cause insulin spikes in the body which lead to inflammation, including in the brain.

[eudamoniac]

My personal definition: If it was impossible for ancient Romans to make this food, it's highly processed. I think this is a pretty good heuristic.

[agos]

raw tomatoes and boiled potatoes are highly processed

[max_]

>Whole grain bread or infant formula are “highly processed” despite very healthy.

"processed" and "healthy" are oxymorons.

I think it's better to tell people to restrict themselves to "whole foods".

[malfist]

Processed and healthy are not oxymorons.

For one, most all preservation methods are processing, including canning, freezing and drying. You can't possibly claim that frozen or canned veggies are unhealthy

[fabbbbb]

Did you find evidence for your two claims?

You can compose a pretty healthy diet from what’s called “processed” (prepared, cooked and packaged). From the very same pyramid.

[lazyasciiart]

I believe you’re missing their point. As well as demonstrating a complete lack of information about infant formula.