Ultra-processed food: The cost of convenience

Authors: Adam Grossman Ph.D, Director - Head of Emerging Risk, Moody's; Sheryll Mangahas, Data Operations Associate, Moody's

 

Whether it is rushing to and from work or school, going to socials or sports, our lives get busy, and when we’re in a hurry, reaching for a favorite snack or prepackaged sauce to speed up school lunch-making or family dinners becomes an attractive option. Ultra-processed food to the rescue!

Although ultra-processed foods (UPFs) may make everyday life a bit easier when time is short, recent scientific studies suggest they might also contribute to shorter, less healthy lives.

Devised by researchers at the University of São Paulo, the term 'ultra-processed food' entered widespread discourse when the Nova Classification System for food was proposed in 2009.

The Nova system divides food into four categories based solely on the nature, extent, and purpose of industrial food processing applied:

• Group 1 (Unprocessed or minimally processed foods): Includes fresh, dry, or frozen foods, and involves no or limited processing to remove inedible and/or undesired parts. It also includes foods like grains that undergo minimal processing to make them digestible.
• Group 2 (Processed culinary ingredients): Includes plant oils, butter, sugar, salt, and other substances derived from Group 1 or natural ingredients produced by drying, grinding, pressing, and refining.
• Group 3 (Processed food): Includes products manufactured by adding Group 2 substances to Group 1 food to preserve it. This includes cheese, salted meat, fruits in syrup, wine, and beer.
• Group 4 (Ultra-processed food): Includes ready-to-eat and ready-to-drink industrial formulations made with manufactured ingredients like flavorings, food dyes, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and emulsifiers.

These products are often designed to be 'hyperpalatable' and built around specific levels of sugar, salt, and fat content calibrated to deceive the brain into thinking it’s receiving nutrition. Scientific evidence suggests that the hyperpalatable nature of some ultra-processed foods makes them addictive.

The marketing of ultra-processed foods gets people—especially kids—hooked, with new products packaged in eye-catching wrappers along with a constant flow of advertising. A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study published in August 2025 reported that children get approximately 62% of their total daily calories from ultra-processed food, as children are especially vulnerable to the ease of consumption and flashy advertisements of these foodstuffs.

 

Linking ultra-processed foods to harm

One of the earliest studies linking ultra-processed foods to bodily injury was published in 2011.  It found a correlation between consumption of ultra-processed food and metabolic syndrome in adolescents.

Scientists have gone on to hypothesize that ultra-processed food plays a significant role in the development of cardiovascular disease and endocrine disruption disorders like obesity, type 2 diabetes, and reproductive injuries in both women and men.

Less expected was the emergence of literature connecting ultra-processed food to cancer. A mere decade after ultra-processed food was first linked to metabolic syndrome, a study connected ultra-processed food to colorectal cancer as well.

Cancer has traditionally been viewed as a disease of aging, where, after decades of replication, cells accumulate errors that cause them to replicate uncontrollably.

That’s why an observed rise of early-onset cancer has made headlines. First, a study published in August 2023 analyzed U.S. National Cancer Institute surveillance data and found that the age-standardized incidence rate of cancer in people under age 50 had increased overall.

This was closely followed by a global study using data from 1990 to 2019, which revealed the same trend. Subsequent years saw an abundance of stories in the media regarding early-onset cancer.

However, a 2025 study from the U.S. National Institutes of Health shows that rising incidence rates of several early-onset cancers have not led to a corresponding increase in cancer-related mortality; this suggests that the rising incidence of early-onset cancer is due to changes in cancer screening and detection.

There were exceptions: mortality data for uterine, testicular, and colorectal cancers implied a small increase in incidence of these diseases. Scientists are now concentrating on determining the causes of these three types of early-onset cancer, with a continuing focus on ultra-processed food.

A recent publication linking early-onset colorectal cancer to ultra-processed food has piqued the media’s interest. The study found a statistically significant link between the consumption of ultra-processed foods and polyps detected during colorectal screenings in women under 50.

Although only about 5% of polyps progress to colorectal cancer, their connection to ultra-processed food is disconcerting; it should make everyone think twice before reaching for that tasty snack or ready-to-heat meal.

 

Breaking the addiction

It can be hard to stop eating your favorite ultra-processed food (UPF), and stopping may not be a matter of willpower alone. The scientific literature around ultra-processed food and addiction is nascent but developing and likely to gain traction as more evidence emerges.

Recent revelations from documents written in the 1980s, when tobacco companies owned food manufacturers, show that the addiction is intentional.

Using their knowledge of how to modulate the addictiveness of cigarettes, tobacco companies designed ultra-processed food to tap into the brain’s dopamine reward pathway, making them more addictive and keeping customers coming back for more.

The addictiveness and health effects of ultra-processed foods are now the subject of litigation. In December 2024, a plaintiff named Bryce Martinez brought the first UPF lawsuit in Pennsylvania, where he sued 11 large food companies, alleging that their engineered ultra-processed food got him addicted and caused him to contract type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease at the age of 16.

Although the complaint detailed the activities of the ultra-processed food companies, the lawsuit did not proceed because he alleged insufficient information about the plaintiff’s specific consumption of ultra-processed foods. The plaintiff is trying to convince the judge to allow him to amend the complaint and keep pursuing the case.

On December 2, 2025, the City Attorney of San Francisco filed a lawsuit against 10 food companies for violating unfair competition laws and creating a public nuisance by marketing ultra-processed foods as healthy rather than warning that the foods cause harm. The lawsuit requests civil fines, corrective advertising, and costs for nuisance abatement.

CoMeta users can access Moody’s ultra-processed food public nuisance scenario to see the potential impact of this lawsuit and others that could come in the future.

In November 2025, The Lancet, a highly regarded medical journal, published a series on ultra-processed food and human health. In addition to scientific discussion of the problem, the series advocated a way out of our dependence on ultra-processed foods.

It suggests establishing public policy regarding ultra-processed foods, including requiring lower levels of calories, sugar, and salt, along with applying taxes and ensuring informative food labeling. The Lancet series also called on corporations that have earned significant profits from manufacturing ultra-processed foods to be part of the solution.

The Lancet reinforces that industry cooperation is essential if we’re to reduce the amount of ultra-processed food in our diets because they control much of the current supply chain, from field crops to finished products.

This dovetails with the recent release of new dietary guidelines in the United States that, for the first time, explicitly recommend limiting our intake of ultra-processed food, and perhaps ushering in a renewed focus on actual food rather than manufactured food products.

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