- A nutrition researcher who studies ultra-processed foods doesn’t categorically ban them at home.
- He relies on nutrition basics to choose snacks that are a bit healthier for his family.
- Prioritize beans, whole grains, and vegetables, while avoiding added sugar and excess sodium.
NIH scientist Kevin Hall pioneered the first study to definitively prove that ultra-processed foods — like chicken tenders and prepackaged snacks — drive us to overeat and gain weight.
And yet at home, he doesn’t avoid convenience food, and buys ultra-processed snacks for his kids.
Hall says his strategy is not as contradictory as it seems, if you understand the nutrition science behind his choices.
What we know — and don’t know — about ultra-processed foods
Six years ago, Hall was the first to show definitively that ultra-processed foods cause people to eat more food (500 calories per day!) and gain weight.
This was a big deal: beforehand, scientists could only draw vague connections between ultra-processed diets and long-term health outcomes. There wasn’t a definitive cause-and-effect relationship established between ultra-processed foods and poor health.
Hall’s team at the National Institutes of Health put people into a laboratory, gave them strictly prepared foods, and studied every morsel they digested for several weeks at a time, seeing what different diets did to their health.
Since then, research on UPFs has snowballed. Today, ultra-processed foods are the poster child for everything that’s wrong with American diets. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are promising to weed them out of our diets as a result of all the new research that has cropped up since Hall’s landmark study.
Do not let perfect be the enemy of good, Hall says
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Hall is not so strict about cutting all UPFs out, and he isn’t going to tell people what to eat.
“I don’t stand on my soapbox to claim to know all the answers,” he said.
Scientists still don’t know exactly why ultra-processed foods are so bad for us. More importantly, he says that we don’t actually know yet whether all ultra-processed foods are, by definition, bad.
The NOVA scale — used to differentiate between unprocessed, processed, and ultra-processed foods — only looks at how food was prepared. It does not account for nutritional value.
Is a can of ready-to-heat chili just as unhealthy as a jelly donut? They’re both ultra-processed, but one contains meat, beans, and non-starchy veggies. The other is sugar, maybe some butter, refined flour, and lots of oil.
At home, Hall tries not to let perfect be the enemy of good. He makes educated guesses about which ultra-processed foods are the best for his health, while also being a realist about convenience.
Like many nutrition and longevity professionals, he prioritizes non-starchy vegetables, whole grains, fruits, legumes, and beans. He also stocks chicken nuggets in his freezer for nights when the kids need a quick dinner. Goldfish crackers are not forbidden.
Hall thinks big picture, and tries to avoid too much added sugar, saturated fat, and sodium in the ultra-processed foods he picks out for his family.
“Would it be better if you had made the homemade version of that?” Hall wondered aloud. “Maybe. It’s possible that there’s some weird additive or some ingredient in that food that is not good for you. We don’t have the science on that yet, but applying what we do know, I think you can still make educated choices.”
Plastic packaging doesn’t mean it’s bad for you
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Canned and frozen foods can be great options for busy folks trying to eat healthier. And they’re not all ultra-processed.
“People kind of mistake processed and ultra-processed,” Hall said.
“There is some degree of confusion. It’s typically people using these rules of thumb: if it comes in a can or a box or a package and has plastic around it, it’s ultra-processed. I’m sorry, they put cucumbers in plastic at my supermarket, they’re not ultra-processed!”
That kind of rigid thinking leads people into fearing foods like canned beans, tinned fish, or frozen vegetables, pantry staples that can make it easier to cook at home, and regularly eat foods that are great for longevity.
“There’s so many canned beans that are just like, seasoned,” Hall said. “They don’t have some weird additives associated with them. A lot of people don’t realize those are just processed foods.”
