Ultra-Processed Foods in 2025: What Five Years of Research Has Taught Us

In the five years since the NIH’s groundbreaking 2019 randomized controlled trial demonstrated that ultra-processed diets cause excess calorie intake and weight gain independent of macronutrient composition, the research on ultra-processed foods has continued to accumulate at a remarkable pace. A 2024 meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal pooling data from over 10 million participants across 45 studies found that higher consumption of ultra-processed foods was associated with significantly elevated risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, depression, anxiety, colorectal cancer and sleep disorders.

What the research is increasingly clarifying is the mechanism: ultra-processed foods are designed by food engineers to override normal satiety signaling through combinations of sugar, fat, salt, flavor enhancers and texture manipulation that activate reward pathways in ways whole foods do not. They also displace fiber-rich foods from the diet, shift the gut microbiome toward less beneficial compositions and expose the body to additives — including certain emulsifiers and artificial sweeteners — that emerging evidence suggests may independently contribute to metabolic dysregulation.

The practical application is not perfectionism — it is proportion. A diet in which the majority of calories come from whole or minimally processed foods, with ultra-processed foods as occasional rather than routine choices, produces meaningfully better health outcomes than the reverse. Given that ultra-processed foods now account for over 60 percent of energy intake in the average American diet, even a moderate shift toward whole foods represents a significant health improvement. At NutriGreene, we help clients make this shift practically and enjoyably — without deprivation.

Sources

• Hall KD, et al. Ultra-processed diets cause excess calorie intake and weight gain. Cell Metab. 2019;30(1):67-77.

• Lane MM, et al. Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of observational studies. BMJ. 2024;384:e077580.

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