Over the past several decades, the American diet has undergone extraordinary changes. Increasingly, Americans are relying on processed food products as key parts of their everyday meals. In fact, in January of this year, the Journal of Nutrition found that a very specific type of processed food — ultraprocessed foods — now make up more than half of adults’ diets in the United States, and that percentage has been steadily increasing over the past two decades.
Despite ultraprocessed foods’ ubiquity in our food supply, scientists are just starting to scratch the surface in understanding how these food products influence our health. Interest in this connection has also skyrocketed, with numerous studies linking myriad diseases and conditions — from Type 2 diabetes to heart disease, cancer, and irritable bowel syndrome, to name a few — to a diet high in ultraprocessed foods. Now, these products have reached the political discourse. Newly-elected United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has targeted ultraprocessed foods as a key part of his plan to fulfill President Trump’s ongoing campaign to “Make America Healthy Again.”
