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Ultra-processed food linked to harm in every major human organ, study finds
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
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So it's the individuals fault for eating the food shoved in their faces?
If they have easily accessible healthier options, kinda.
The point is that they often do not have those options due to availability, cost, access, etc.
That's why I said easily accessible.
I think the point is that they also often do.
Is healthy food shoved into people's faces? You see giant signs on highways for healthy restaurants? Is the cheapest food healthy? Come on...
The cheapest food would be raw ingredients like rice, beans etc. That way you can eat an appropriate amount and not feel hungry. Also let's not pretend like frozen veggies are more expensive than McDonalds or other restaurants.
Otherwise eating less is always cheaper, you just might feel hungry.
Personal responsibility absolutely plays a role here.
I know you certainly need it to.
I have it. I know when I make poor diet decisions it's on me, not anyone else.
And if those poor diet choices weren't around what would you eat? You're almost there...
I'd eat healthier food because I'd have to.
That has absolutely nothing to do with people who have access to healthy foods choosing to eat unhealthy foods.
If I go out and buy a bottle of liquor, I can't blame liquor advertising for my choice to break my sobriety. That would be all on me.
Yeah you're right. Everyone is responsible for their choices and advertisers are just wanting their time feeding us ads that have no effect on is at all.
I mean, I feel like the argument about food deserts and poverty and such has some validity. But otoh, I have known many overweight people in my life with good jobs and plenty of options and opportunities to buy real food, and they don't do it. And imma say that's their fault.
Of course you'll say that; it fits your narrative. Having money doesn't negate the accessibility and promotion of ultra processed food. A person can have a good job and make plenty of money, but not have time or effort to cook at home or stick to a specific plan. Some people may have health conditions that make them fat like thyroid issues or hell even depression which circularly makes people less likely to eat healthier. Regardless, UPF is the easiest to acquire, purposefully addictive and super cheap not unlike any other addictive substance.
The real issue is society has created these problems, provided the lucrative solutions and brainwashed people like you into blaming the victims because your experience isn't like theirs.
My experience is theirs. I grew up in a household that never had any real money issues, and was consistently fed UPFs. Drank probably around 6 sodas per day. Then one day I said "I'm tired of being fat. Why am I fat? Maybe its because I eat so much junk food, since it is well known that junk food makes you fat." So I stopped eating junk food and now I'm not fat. My parents and other people I knew in my hometown, meanwhile, continued eating junk food, and have continued to gain weight. I will firmly classify this as "their fault".
Ah right. You were fat now you hate fat people. That makes more sense to why you're the way you are.
I don't hate fat people. I just think that when my dad, for example, who is a boomer with a paid off house, a cushy management office job, and a significant 6 figure salary, goes to McDonalds on his lunch break, that that is a choice he made
It's like the two things can be true at once without conflicting -- but America would have to be huge at that point, and filled with hundreds of millions of people of vastly different economic standing, but it's possible. Can you imagine?~
Yes it partially is and I'm so sick of people denying that fact. Nobody ever has put a gun to your head and demanded you go to McDonalds and order a bunch of things from the menu.
You live alone, in your home, with all of this food. Who is the one constantly decided to eat it at their own discretion? YOU! Nobody else! YOU!
Stop detouring accountability and responsibility.
And I know what you're going to bring up next because I've heard it before "BUT BUT THE SUGAR! THE ADDITIVES! THE ADDICTION!" blah blah. Sure, those are a factor but it isn't like the food themselves have the same kind of chemicals you'd find in things like drugs, cigarettes and alcohol. Those are two huge differences.
But okay whatever, keep blindly blaming the food for how you got 400 pounds one day after the next. Keep believing that half-ass narrative.
You can completely stop those things. You can't stop eating.
There's definitely an element of personal responsibility however it's not always as simple as that. Ultra-processed foods are cheap, have long shelf lives and can be quick and easy to prepare. I don't know if you've ever tried to go on a diet to avoid UPF as much as possible, but it's way more expensive, takes a lot more effort to cook everything from scratch, and generally doesn't last long at home. For a lot people, they don't have the luxury or time to manage such a diet.
Some people are more susceptible to addiction than others. For some, having a pack of biscuits or doughnuts in the house would be torture and would have to eat the lot if they're there, where as for others they wouldn't even think about it at all and probably forget they exist. Of course, people need to take that responsibility and not buy them, but you can say that about any addict.
I have to say, this idea that it is so much harder and more expensive to cook real food is pretty bullshit.
As an example, I had a friend in college who had a recipie he ate almost every night for dinner: one can of beans, one can of diced tomatoes. Put in bowl, stir, microwave, eat. He called it.... Beans and Tomatos.
Another friend ate (still eats?) the same breakfast for years. His recipie? Oatmeal. Period.
Both these options are easy and quick to make, extremely cheap, and shelf stable. I want to be gracious to people's individual struggles with things like depression and addiction and whatnot... But seriously, from an objective standpoint, this is not at all difficult.
Yeah that's not a realistic meal. I'm talking about cooking proper balanced, healthy (although not always!) and tasty meals that are suitable for a family. The prep alone can take just as much time as it can to smash some beige oven food in the oven for 20mins at 180C.
I do this too. I make it for my kids, throw in some frozen blueberries, sprinkle with chia seeds and add a small dollop of biscoff or golden syrup. Although it's not that much effort, it's still quite a bit more than making a bowl of cereal, especially when cleaning the saucepan after as porridge is a bitch to clean once it's started to cool.
Cost wise it absolutely is more expensive. Every substitute product I get that's UPF free costs significantly more. I'd say it added about 20% to our weekly grocery costs trying significantly reduce it.
You don't have to avoid UPF. Just eat less and fill with salad/veggies until you aren't hungry. As long as you keep the calories in range you'll be mostly fine. Maybe watch the macros a bit.
Calories are a unit of heat, and absorbing nutrition is a biological process. Unless you're a bomb calorimeter, they have very little to do with what goes on inside you after you eat. I urge you to reconsider what food you choose to eat.
You should absolutely desist from saying that other people should not avoid UPFs, because that is a harmful statement in the same vein as "you don't have to stop smoking."
You are like 25 years behind the science. There is a difference in absorption, but its negligible. Your digestion is incredibly efficient at absorbing calories. Unless you have some weird condition, you can count calories 1:1 and ignore the rounding error of absorption.
This calorimeter talking point has been debunked for a long time now.
Yes, people do need to take some personal responsibility, but also corporations engineering products that are unhealthy and addictive and marketers spending billions to convince people its good stuff... is not a great system.
Why does our environment need to be so adversarial?
This is a reasonable question, but also, I don't feel like my environment is all that adversarial most of the time. The corporations can go ahead and develop their products, and I will continue to not buy them - same as I don't buy cigarettes. And I can't remember the last time I say, eg, a Doritos commercial, since I have ad blockers on my browsers and don't watch cable tv or listen to radio stations almost ever. I would say that the most adversarial aspect of my environment is the fact that I have to drive most places to get anywhere, and when I drive, I drive past Taco Bell. And that's a whole thing.
So a gun to the head at the McDonald's counter isn't realistic, but what is realistic is an empty belly and a choice between unhealthy, cheap food and further hunger. I find it very easy to imagine that scenario, because I've been in it. Have you? Or can you imagine how a person could be?
I, personally, have been hungry in the past and eaten at McDonalds. After I did that, my first thought was "I'm an idiot, why did I do that?"
That's a nice story but it has very little to do with what I was asking. Have you ever faced the hard choice of continued hunger or cheap food? Can you envisage a situation where someone might have to make that choice?
I am currently hungry and am currently choosing not to eat cheap food.
Ok, and do you have the choice? So, you could eat fresh, healthy food today if you choose to? Because if so, then that's not the choice I'm taking about, is it.
That's literally the choice you described:
Have the day you deserve.
I will and it'll be better than yours.
Accessibility to healthy food options is a global problem.
This is way beyond the scope of just Obesity you seemed to be upset about.
Be happy you live somewhere where healthy options are available but please take that stick out of your arse and realise how fortunate you are for it. And don’t start a just move argument because if you are even a little social conscious you understand poor people do not have the luxury to move.
Broo the amount of people pretending that they can't get rice, beans, frozen veggies and some sauce, but McDonalds is cheaper and available is insane.
"I have no choice, but to buy McDonalds every day" Lmao what? Unless you don't have a kitchen, that is ridiculous. Even then, don't they sell salads? Get the burgers for the calories you need and fill with salads until you aren't hungry anymore.
Edit: For relatively cheap and complete protein source consider Soy-granulate, sometimes called TVP. It also has a long shelf life since its dry.
Sounds like you don’t understand opportunity cost and don’t value the cost of your own time…