Every five years the committee responsible for updating the USDA food guidelines looks at diet and disease trends in the US and recommends changes to the food guidelines. These guidelines include a focus on nutrients that we should be consuming more of, such as potassium and calcium, and nutrients that we should be consuming less of, such as sodium and saturated fat.  These recommendations are based on trends in the American diet and all scientific evidence that supports the relationship of those trends and disease risk.  A great example of these relationships and the following recommendations would be the radical increase in simple sugar in the 80’s and 90’s and the recommendation by the USDA that we aim for less than 25% of daily calories from added sugars.  In more direct terms, Americans started consuming a lot of sugary drinks in the 80’s and 90’s, the incidence of type 2 diabetes skyrocketed, and the USDA recommended decreasing sugar intake.

For the first time in its history, the committee is considering recommending a limit on a particular type of food, called ‘ultra-processed.  Studies over the past decade have consistently found that nearly 58% of the American diet is derived from ultra-processed foods.  The chart below demonstrates the various levels of food processing. Officially defined as foods that “use many ingredients including food additives that improve palatability, processed raw materials (hydrogenated fats, modified starches, etc.) and ingredients that are rarely used in home cooking such as soy protein or mechanically separated meat. These foods are mainly of industrial origin and are characterized by a sensory pleasantness and the fact that they can be stored for a long time.”

It is hardly possible in the American diet to eliminate all ultra-processed foods.  With our busy lifestyles and ever-increasing cost of living, who can afford the time or the lost income that time represents to make all our foods from scratch?  I absolutely love to cook, and I have a master’s degree in food science and I don’t think I could avoid all the ultra-processed foods no matter how hard I tried.

Advances in food technology have enabled us to feed a global population of 8 billion, a remarkable achievement. However, this progress has come at a cost, as our food supply has become saturated with products lacking essential nutrients, offering only empty calories. This dichotomy has given rise to a dual crisis in the United States—millions are grappling with the consequences of both overconsumption and nutritional deficiencies.  In the U.S., a substantial portion of the population faces two distinct forms of malnourishment at the same time. On one hand, there is a prevalence of overweight and obese individuals, ingesting excess calories that manifest as stored fat, disrupting the body’s regulatory processes and leading to diseases. On the other hand, many in the same population suffer from deficiencies in vital vitamins and minerals. These deficiencies, while milder than historical acute deficiency syndromes like goiter or scurvy, have subtle yet profound impacts on health, affecting processes such as tissue repair, immune function, and overall well-being.

The USDA has conducted a study affirming that an ultra-processed diet can meet all vitamin and mineral needs without excessive sugar, salt, and fat. But this study overlooks the fact that the scientists conducting the study knew the recommendations for health in the first place.  And in the second place, the scientists knew what was in the various ultra-processed foods they chose for their diet and were able to plan and implement the diet accordingly.  In other words, the study was rigged in their favor.  The average American is only vaguely aware of their own nutrition needs, so designing a diet to meet those needs with ultra-processed foods is going to be difficult.  And the average American has a million other things on their mind.  I don’t doubt that most Americans WANT to eat healthy.  The problem is they don’t know how and even if they did, they are so busy that it is hard to make the timely process of designing a healthy diet a priority.

I think it is laudable that the committee is acknowledging the problem of high calorie, low nutrient foods finally.  Unfortunately, I don’t think a recommendation to limit ultra-processed foods will do much good.  Much like when they put the grains group at the base of the food pyramid, they are creating well-intentioned misinformation.  Once the public sees that it is possible to meet your nutrient needs with an ultra-processed diet, and you can bet the food industry will pay billions to get that message out, they will assume that the recommendation is another moral high horse.  ‘Yes, it would be nice if we could all eat fresh, home-made food every day, but who has the time and the ultra-processed foods cover most of our needs anyway’ thinks the consumer.

I think it would be more helpful if we instead created a new category, called ultra-processed death.  I know this language is strong, but it is time to put a spotlight on an ugly truth about the American diet.  Companies are making billions selling poison, and there are no policies in place to hold them responsible.  Right now, if I was meeting with a client, I would call these foods ‘empty calories’.  I ask them to instead choose ‘nutrient dense’ foods.  The idea is that we should choose foods with more vitamins and minerals per calorie.  An easy example is ice cream compared to skim milk.  Skim milk provides 90 calories, 300 mg calcium, and several other vitamins and minerals, per 8-ounce cup.  Ice cream, on the other hand, has 280 calories per cup and 130 mg of calcium.  If you do a side-by-side comparison, that is 3.3 mg calcium per calorie in the skim milk and 0.46 mg calcium per calorie in the ice cream.  The skim milk is 7 times more nutrient dense, and therefore the obvious choice.

But wait, that is a lot of math you say?  And you are not even sure how much calcium you need in a day, so maybe ice cream will cover it in that one cup, and you shouldn’t be so worried?  (You need 1000 mg of calcium a day, so you would have to eat 7.7 cups of ice cream or 2156 calories to get your calcium).  This is my point.  Why are we making individuals responsible for the nutrition health crisis in the United States?  The recommendation to eat less ultra-processed foods would be helpful, but it may not even become part of the dietary guidelines even though the relationship to disease is clear.  That is because the food industry has a big say in the final guidelines, and it is going to significantly hurt their bottom dollar if Americans start consuming less ultra-processed foods.  The fact is that ultra-processing has some benefit to individuals in that it allows us some convenient foods, lets say crackers as an example, so that we can eat and run to our job, or the kids school event, or a trip to the mall for shoes.  But that small convenience that we have become used to makes billions for the food companies, while it is giving us type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, sleep apnea, fatty livers, osteoarthritis, and an overall feeling of poor health.  It is not a fair trade off.

I am sticking with my recommendation that we create a new food group and call it ultra-processed death.  These are the foods, like ice cream, chips, soda, plastic packaged ramen, those stupid protein bars that everyone thinks are healthy but are really an expensive way to get kidney stones, all these foods should be called ultra-processed death, and we should recommend people eat as close to none of them as possible.

This is going to be a hard ask.  There are several ultra-processed foods in my kitchen right now, and you see how committed I am to the math of nutrition.  They are there because they are easy.  They are there because they are yummy.  They are there because I grew up with them and they are comfort foods.  To determine if this is a realistic ask, I am committing to a year less processed.  This means that I am going to try to eliminate the ultra-processed death from my kitchen and find ways to eat less for convenience and more for my health.  I would love to have some friends on this journey.  You can follow me on tiktok and Instagram at nickellnutrition.  It’s not going to be easy, but if we have a community, I think we can do it.  And if we have a community, maybe we can also start to hold the food companies accountable for the ultra-processed death they sell.  Whatever happens, I know that it will be worth the journey 😊