Ultra-processed foods make up far too

much of America's diet, experts say

By Los Angeles Times, adapted by Newsela staff on 03.17.16
Word Count 652

Naomi Woods (left) eats lunch with her classmates at Northeast Elementary Magnet School in Danville, Illinois, Sept. 20,
2011. The curriculum at the public school is focused on health and wellness. Americans are eating a lot of ultraprocessed foods which are packed with sugar, a study says. Photo: AP/Seth Perlman

A troubling new report on America's unhealthy eating habits was released recently. The
researchers behind the study say they can sum up what is wrong with our diet in just two
words: ultra-processed foods.

Extra Sugar, Artificial Ingredients

Ultra-processed foods are those that contain articial avors, colors, sweeteners,
stabilizers and other additives. These additives are included to make a manufactured item
resemble real food, to hide unpleasant tastes, or to make a tasteless food tastier. Ultraprocessed foods include things like frozen pizzas, breakfast cereals and soda.
According to the new study, ultra-processed foods make up 58 percent of all calories
Americans consume in a typical day. Calories from food are necessary, because they
supply the energy that fuels people's bodies. However, too many calories or the wrong
kind of calories can makes people unhealthy and overweight.

Most disturbingly, the researchers found that ultra-processed foods are responsible for 90
percent of the added sugars that Americans eat and drink.

Extra Weight, Health Problems

Government health experts advise Americans to get no more than 10 percent of their total
calories in the form of added sugars. However, most people are not listening. Researchers
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC) have said that 71 percent
of American adults exceed that 10 percent goal.
All of that added sugar makes people more likely to be overweight or extremely
overweight. In turn, that sets them up for serious health problems like Type 2 diabetes,
heart disease, stroke and cancer not to mention lots of cavities.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 75 percent of the sugar and
high-fructose corn syrup eaten by Americans is found in packaged foods made by the
food industry. So the researchers behind the new report decided to try to gure out the
extent to which the food industry was feeding America.

What Did You Eat Today?

To nd out, they turned to information collected by the CDC as part of its ongoing National
Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which tracks the eating habits of a nationally
representative group of children and adults. The researchers focused on interviews with
9,317 people conducted in 2009 and 2010. The survey-takers were asked to recall every
single thing they had eaten in the previous 24 hours. More than 280,000 food items were
named.
The survey-takers consumed 2,070 calories per day, on average. About 28 percent of
those calories came from unprocessed or minimally processed foods, such as eggs, milk,
vegetables and sh. 3.1 percent came from cooking ingredients like table sugar and olive
oil. An additional 10 percent were traced to processed foods, including cheese, canned
vegetables and cured meat.

Cakes, Cookies, Salty Snacks

However, ultra-processed foods contributed more calories than all the other food types
combined. They accounted for nearly 3 in every 5 calories consumed. Breads, cakes,
cookies, pies and salty snacks were the most popular ultra-processed foods.
Overall, 14 percent of all calories could be traced to added sugars, the survey revealed.
However, some types of food were sweeter than others.
By denition, unprocessed and minimally processed foods contained no added sugars.
Processed foods got 2 percent of their calories from added sugars, on average. For ultraprocessed foods, that gure was 21 percent.

America Needs To Cut Back

Not surprisingly, the more ultra-processed foods a person ate, the more likely they were to
exceed the recommended 10-percent added sugar limit.
The researchers divided the survey-takers into ve equal-sized groups based on their
consumption of ultra-processed foods. Among those who ate the least of these foods,
added sugar accounted for 7.5 percent of total calories. Among those who ate the most
ultra-processed foods, added sugars made up 19.5 percent of total calories.
The signicance of these results is clear, the researchers said: If Americans are ever going
to get serious about reducing their intake of added sugars, they will have to cut way back
on ultra-processed foods.