How Ultra‑Processed Foods Impact Your Overall Health

Transcript

Intro: I’m Dr. Nathaniel Chin, and you’re listening to Dementia Matters, a podcast about Alzheimer’s disease. Dementia Matters is a production of the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Our goal is to educate listeners on the latest news in Alzheimer’s disease research and caregiver strategies. Thanks for joining us.

Dr. Nathaniel Chin: Welcome back to Dementia Matters. Brain health is closely tied with physical health, including the food we eat, so it's important to be aware of what you're putting into your body. Food packaging and misleading advertising can make it hard to build healthy, nutritional habits. Ultra-processed foods are important to be aware of, but what exactly are they and what effects do they have on the brain? Here to help us understand ultra-processed foods and how to make the best choices for our health is Dr. Beth Olson, associate professor of nutritional sciences at UW–Madison. Dr. Olson will be further discussing this topic at our upcoming Healthy Living with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) Education Program happening on Friday, March 6, 2026. More details about the event and how to register to attend can be found in the show notes. Dr. Olson, welcome to Dementia Matters.

Dr. Beth Olson: Thank you for having me. I'm pleased to be here today.

Chin: Well, to begin, let's go over the basics. What are ultra-processed foods and how are they different from other kinds of foods?

Olson: So I, myself, am not a huge fan of the term. It comes out of a research group so it doesn't have a legal definition. You can't go to the store and pick up a food and have a label tell you if it's ultra-processed or not. That's one reason I'm not a huge fan of it. It has its origins, as I mentioned, in researchers. They have put foods and things we drink into categories. So, if I may, I'll tell you the four categories. The first is minimally-processed foods. Those are things that we think of, you know, in the produce aisle, in our garden; things like milk, yogurt, chicken and beef, but also apples, bananas, other vegetables, tomatoes. So they're minimally processed. They might be cleaned. They might be ground up. We can't eat wheat from the field, so ground wheat or rolled oats. Something that makes it safe and edible for us to eat. They then have a category which is a bit unusual, which they call culinary ingredients. Those are things like oils, fats, salt, sugar. They're not foods per se, in that generally we don't eat them. They're ingredients we put in foods. Then they have processed foods. That's where these two come together. When you take those whole, if you will, minimally-processed fruits, vegetables, meats, and you add ingredients to them—sugar, salt, fat—now they're a processed food. They might be canned. They might be frozen, you know, something like that. Then you get to ultra-processed foods, so that's the last category. It's a category that is about—there isn't a number or a measure or something you can look at on the label. It's kind of an idea. It's a food which has multiple ingredients. Often people trying to describe it will say it doesn't look a lot like the food that you started with. If I were to take what I think is kind of a clearer example—corn is minimally processed. Salt is an ingredient. You could add it to the corn in canning it; it's now processed. If you make corn chips, that's what most people would call an ultra-processed food. It's not that much like corn anymore. It probably has a number of ingredients in it. Those foods also then add ingredients that you wouldn't find in your home often—flavors, stabilizers, preservatives to keep it from, say, molding, colors. So it has a lot of those kinds of ingredients that you're not going to see in a whole food and which we would say generally you don't see much, even if it's processed. That's kind of what pushes it over into the ultra-processed category. I wouldn't say it's different from other foods because a lot of them are kind of a continuum. You know, very plain yogurt is considered a minimally-processed food. Then you add a little sugar, it might be processed. You add coloring and, you know, something else, now it might be ultra processed. So you can't always tell where a food falls exactly.

Chin: Beth, my mind is blown here and that's why I'm so glad to have you on the podcast because this is so confusing to a non-expert and yet we hear in the news how important it is to identify ultra-processed foods and avoid ultra-processed foods. Right from the get go, it's hard for us because this isn't something that is clearly defined or legally acknowledged. And so I'm really glad to have you on and I'm certainly looking forward to your Healthy Living with MCI talk where we can go more into brain health. So I guess my next question was really, how do we identify the ultra-processed—I mean, you've described, you have a great example. Let's say we're at a grocery store. How are we going to know that something is ultra-processed versus minimally-processed?

Olson: So I think you aren't. And that's where some of the problem lies. Again, on the extremes, most reasonable people can do it. They can say the corn is minimally-processed. This corn chip is an ultra-processed food. It's in the middle where you're stuck. Given how much of our diet comes from ultra-processed and processed foods—we don't all just eat minimally-processed foods—it's unreasonable to think, well, I can just cut those out and, you know, there we go. I think what people would be better off doing is thinking about some guidance that we have and and thinking about where is it on the spectrum. Can I push more towards one end of the spectrum versus the other? The other thing they can do is when they do pick up packaged foods—and ultra-processed foods invariably are packaged either in a can or in a box, in a package in the freezer aisle—to look at the side panel or the back panel where there is a nutrition facts panel and an ingredient list. Take a look at those and say, does this have some of the things that I'm being told ultra-processed has that I should be careful about? Saturated fat or high levels of fat, added sugar, sodium, does it have a lot of those? Look at the ingredient list. Is it listing whole foods? Is it listing whole oats, whole grain, whole wheat for bread, for instance? Is the first ingredient just regular wheat? Is the first ingredient sugar? So when you put those two things together, you now have a better way of looking at whether this food is or isn't an ultra-processed, if you will, food. The other thing I tell people about food labels is even that isn't always that helpful. Like, so it's got some amount of saturated fat. Well, is that a lot or is that a little? How do I know? What I suggest people do to start is say, what are the kind of foods I want to buy? I'm going to pick up two of those and compare the labels. So ready to eat breakfast cereal is an ultra-processed food but you can pick up two boxes and say, which one has less added sugar? Which one has more fiber? Is one of them lower in fat? Most cereals are. And then pick the one that is better for you in that way versus saying, well, these are both ultra-processed foods so I can't eat them. No, we really rely heavily on many of those foods for many good reasons and there's ways to pick ones that are better than others.

Chin: Well, you just answered a debate I have with my wife frequently about cereal, where she doesn't want any of it and I'm saying, “Well, this is less bad. And so I'm okay with this.”

Olson: (laughs)

Chin: But one of the things I was taught too is if you can't pronounce the ingredient list, or you don't know what it is, that there's a high likelihood that there's a lot of preservatives and that makes it more ultra-processed. Is that something that would be fair to say?

Olson: It's true. I think that one caveat there is there are going to be—there are in some foods, say, there can be a whole wheat bread, which would be considered ultra processed, and it's fortified or enriched. They don't have to be, but many are. They're going to have vitamins that have funny sounding names so they sound very chemical, but they're just vitamin C—ascorbic acid. Sounds kind of like a bad thing to be eating, but it's not. Or any of the other vitamins may have odd names. The other thing is I am not convinced that a small amount, in an overall healthy diet, of something like a preservative is a bad idea. I can't make my own bread. I just don't have time. I'm not very good at it. I am going to buy a whole grain bread. I might not eat it that fast. I don't want it to mold. It's made in a bakery, you know, by a company somewhere else often, shipped to my store. It sits on the shelf. I come and buy it. It comes to my house. I don't want it to have mold and that wouldn't be healthy. So I don't mind that there's a small amount of a preservative in there. I think that's the caveat is you have to think of what are those ingredients, how many, and what are they doing for me? Maybe they're doing something that I'm willing to accept in order to have this convenience.

Chin: What do we know so far about this research concept of ultra-processed foods and then health?

Olson: Yeah, it's an emerging area. I think that's one thing for people to realize. This isn't something that's now a ton of research has just come out. The definition is relatively new by the researchers. What they're doing oftentimes, not always, but they're looking at existing data sets where people have been followed for years. Those people reported what they ate in some way or another and then, over time, reported—or there were medical records—to see if they developed, say, obesity or diabetes or cancer. And then what many of the studies that are out have done is looked at, okay, if people eat very few of my category of ultra-processed foods and I compare them to people who eat many, what happens to their health outcomes? People who eat a lot of ultra-processed foods are more likely—so doesn't mean everybody, just more likely—to have developed something like obesity or diabetes, cancer. They've looked at a number of diseases. It varies what they find. That is what we often talk about as an association. It's not cause and effect. It doesn't mean the foods cause that. I think one thing we're looking at, we like to say what we control for—we take into account differences outside of the food but that's really hard to do. People may be different, inherently, that choose more ultra-processed foods. I think the other thing we have to think about is, if 80 percent of my foods is ultra-processed, what do I have left? I only have 20 percent of apples and bananas and eggs and milk and foods like that that have many nutritional properties—antioxidants and vitamins and minerals and fiber. Is it that I ate all those ultra-processed foods or is it that I didn't eat all those foods that were good for me?

Chin: Now we're talking about general health and the science behind it and I'm guessing some of our listeners are asking, am I going to know—is my body going to feel the effects of ultra-processed foods? Is there, in your experience or in the literature, do ultra-processed foods affect the individual, whether it's energy levels or hunger or mood or cravings?

Olson: I haven't thought that much about that, to be honest. Now, one thing that would suggest to me is there's not a lot of research out on that or it would probably float to the top. We'd be seeing it more. I suspect there isn't a lot. I would have to take a closer look to see, but there would be research that would be adjacent that would tell us something. I would say in terms of mood, in the short run, it could be that the ultra-processed foods improve mood. We think about things like comfort foods. Maybe it's chocolate cake or ice cream or pizza or something we grew up with, and it makes us feel good to eat it. In that way, it may be helpful. I think often when I'm doing general nutrition talks, I note that. You don't have to get rid of all of that. If having the birthday cake makes you feel good, gosh darn it, have a piece of birthday cake. And it may be what's associated with it—it's a birthday party. It's going to the movies with my sweetie so I'm going to get the popcorn with the butter and salt. I don't want to discount any of that. There might be some literature around things like energy. Energy is a really, really hard thing to define. If somebody says, “I feel more energetic,” we don't have, I don't think, really good ways of measuring that. Actually foods that have a lot of easily available carbohydrates, like added sugars, actually have been shown to make people think better and because our brains need glucose. There is a little bit about if your blood glucose then drops—it's gotten high and now it drops—that maybe you would feel more lethargic. I think probably the strongest evidence is around things like hunger and satiety. The belief is the ultra-processed foods—having sugar, sodium, fat—are very palatable, so very easy to overeat because they taste really good. I think of just myself, like have I ever sat down with a bag of apples and then later thought, “Oh, I just ate too many apples. Although they're sweet, they have a lot of fiber, they're crunchy, they have water, they take time to eat. Now, I probably could eat a piece of apple pie and then think, “Oh, that was so good. I need another.” And then think, “Yeah, I probably didn't need that second one. Now I'm kind of full.” I think it does affect our hunger and satiety in that we're more likely to overeat and feel a bit more full. There has been at least one study by a researcher named Kevin Hall in which he did show if people could just eat however much they wanted among processed, ultra-processed foods and less-processed foods, they ate more and gained weight with the ultra-processed foods. That was a very short time period, small amount of people, but it would suggest there's something to that where we can get more in before we go, “Oh, I'm full,” and overeat. And, you know, to some degree, that's not always a comfortable feeling. That may in itself—I mean, I've never felt like after I ate Thanksgiving dinner, “Oh, I really feel like getting out for a run now,” because you're kind of full. It can be kind of sedating. So I think that's it's going to be right now a little bit more adjacent. I think maybe some of the work will come on actually feeding it and measuring some of these things.

Chin: Yeah, I think most of us can tell a story of that feeling of, you know what, I ate so many pretzels I feel sick, versus we don't usually say that to vegetables, like raw vegetables and hummus.

Olson: Yes, exactly.

Chin: Okay. All right, that's helpful. You did talk about your own—well, I feel like you revealed some of your own tendencies in your prior answer—and I'm wondering, are there particular ultra-processed foods that you might worry more about versus others? And what's one that you fall victim to?

Olson: For myself, no. For the general public, I'm not sure I know enough to worry about a particular food. I would say there's a category that I think can be overlooked for some population, and that's beverages. Soda would be considered an ultra-processed food. We know that there's a high sugar intake among soda drinkers. It's a lot of calories. It's what we would have, before this kind of ultra-processed word took off, we would have called it maybe a junk food. In the nutrition world, we talk about nutrient density. It's a nutrient poor food. It's giving us calories, but not a lot beside that. A colleague once said, “It's not about the sugar, it's the company it keeps.” You know, the sugar in the apple brings a lot of nutrients with it. The sugar in soda doesn't bring much good company. There are also—I'm not a big target and I've worked in a food company so I know how advertising works. I'm not a target of a lot of these products, but I do seek out and see them. If you go into a Kwik Trip or a convenience store or a gas station, there's a wall full of drinks and many of them are high in sugar. Many of them have caffeine. There are energy drinks with ingredients that kids are drinking that I'm not so sure the volume of those ingredients, if anybody's looked to see what they do to kids. Herbals, ones that say they provide energy. Our coffee shops have very large size, holiday or everyday coffees that have a tremendous amount of added sugar. They could be made with milk that's whole fat, a fair amount of fat and calories. So as a category, that's one I think we sometimes overlook.

Chin: I'm so glad you brought up beverages. Of course, recently there was an article that came out showing that caffeinated coffee and green tea has a protective benefit when it comes to our brain health but, even in that article, they were very clear to say this is black coffee, or this is not with all the other added things to it. We have to be very thoughtful about what comes with it. I love that story you tell of your colleague and how they describe it. Are there—based on talking to you it feels like, one, we can't avoid ultra-processed foods and, two, maybe it's not nearly as bad as we're led to believe based on the media. How do you talk to people about finding the right healthy balance or incorporating this type of food into a person's diet?

Olson: We have traditionally used, and will continue to use, is guidance from the federal government called the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. They've been revised recently. They're not terribly different, actually, despite what one might see in the news, what they are previously. We tend to—when I talk and others who work in nutrition education work with people, we look towards that. It is also a whole food kind of philosophy, less processed, as much produce and fresh fruits and vegetables as you can afford and find. Whole grains, dairy or a dairy group. Some people don't use dairy. There's soy-fortified beverages. There's other ways to get those nutrients. Protein. Then we talk about variety within those. So yes, vegetables are good for you. If all you had was tomatoes day after day after day, that's not what is going to help you. You'll get some good nutrients, but you should be looking at a lot of colors. The same with protein. If all you ate every day, day after day after day, was beef, you would be missing out on some of the nutrients that are in plant proteins. We talk within those categories and that's what I describe to people. Look at those categories, go for the widest variety that you can, think about your personal preferences. I come from a background, prior to many of my current hats, of looking at the importance of dietary fiber. So I always say take a look at how much fiber is in your diet. If you have a lot of fiber in your diet, chances are you have a pretty healthy diet.

Chin: Oh, okay. That's something good to know. And along those lines, you use the word affordable. I have had many people approach me and say, well, you know, ultra-processed foods are just more affordable than whole foods and vegetables. Let's just say for a person who's on a tighter budget or relies more on convenience foods, what's a strategy for them so that they're not spending a lot of money but also still trying to get the best from what's available to them?

Olson: There's probably many strategies depending on the approach. Certainly one would be—and we talk about that often in our nutrition education—that there can be very healthy choices in packaged foods—boxes, cans, frozen. If you have the ability to get to a grocery store with a variety of those and stock up, having in your pantry—if you have that room or in your freezer—canned beans, canned vegetables, canned fruit, frozen vegetables, frozen mixed vegetables, pastas. Whole grain pastas would be another excellent choice. If you can have those foods on hand, they're healthy choices. They can be combined with a little something. Even for myself and my family, I would say, for years there was just no way every night we were going to get together a home cooked, every dish meal. So often it would be one item would be home cooked in some way and the rest of them would be a bit more processed. It might be spaghetti from a jar. Again, choose carefully. It might be pasta from a box, but then it might be fresh vegetables that we steamed. I didn't have to try to make it all. I could make good choices among the processed foods and then I could use the more convenient versions, looking at the labels, choosing carefully when that was helpful. Another strategy, of course, would be planning your meals, looking at sales, stocking up when you can. That's not, again, that takes time. Might take a couple shopping trips. Not everybody has it. The last one I'll throw out for anybody who does do some cooking is, for quite some time, I would cook on the weekends. I'd make dinner on Saturday, make dinner on Sunday. I'd make twice as much as we needed and I'd freeze half. Some of that might help people who are really struggling in one way or another, whether it's money or time.

Chin: Those are wonderful tips and thank you for expanding it beyond money to time because that is obviously a huge factor in this as well. You know, I've been asking you a lot of questions and I'm wondering, people must approach you at dinner parties, at gatherings, given what you do. What's a common myth that you hear a lot, whether it's ultra-processed foods or just nutrition in general, that you wanted to clear up with our audience?

Olson: I think a myth, a kind of a more general myth but can be applied in ultra-processed foods, is that if something is natural, it's good, and if something is perceived to be not natural—synthesized, has a long sounding name—it's bad. I think that's not true, just on the face of it, but also is a way that people can be quite misled into buying a product that has things added that sound natural but, again, aren't even proven to be safe. Just because we extracted it from some plant we found in the Amazon doesn't mean we should put it in an energy drink and drink it in big quantities. You know, natural doesn't necessarily mean better or healthy or even safe sometimes. Just because, say, a vitamin is synthesized in the lab and then added to—you know, vitamin C is often added to breakfast beverages as essentially as an orange juice replacement or calcium is sometimes added to orange juice for kids who don't drink milk—just because we made it somewhere and put it in doesn't mean our body would see that as something different. Generally, it doesn't. This is where some of the sugar arguments break down. Once sugar gets into your system, your body's like, that is sugar and it uses it. Just because it was added versus naturally occurring doesn't mean it's inherently different. You know, there are other reasons. I think that that then carries over to ultra-processed foods in that I don't think we have great evidence now that the things that are added—flavors, colors, preservatives—are the reason that ultra-processed foods make you have chronic disease. There may be something to it. I just don't think we have good evidence yet so it's a big leap to make at this time.

Chin: Well, I appreciate that scientific advice here and keeping us grounded. To end today, because you are going to be our featured speaker at Healthy Living with MCI, what can our listeners expect from that presentation and could you give us just a brief preview of what you'll be talking about?

Olson: Well, I think I'll cover things we did today, but with a bit more detail. Sometimes I feel when I speak, I'm saying, trust me. I've told you this. I often will show a little bit of information or data where it came from. It's not just me, you know, it's out there in other ways. The other thing I would do—I'll do a little bit more on the dietary guidelines. The new ones, how the previous ones looked, what they say, how you can use those to put together different kinds of healthy diets. There isn't one healthy way of eating. There are very healthy people who eat meat. There's very healthy people who are vegetarians. There's very healthy people who, like me, don't eat spinach. There's many ways to put together a healthy diet. I think I'll try to spend a little time giving some examples of how somebody can put together these foods into something that could be tailored to what is their need, their preference. Like you say, the need for convenience, meet a budget, that kind of thing.

Chin: Well, that's wonderful. I'm really looking forward to that. And so I'd like to thank you, Dr. Beth Olson, for being on Dementia Matters and for your upcoming presentation on Healthy Living with MCI.

Olson: You're very welcome and I look forward to doing the presentation.

Chin: If you want to hear more from Beth about ultra-processed foods and gain confidence in making food choices that support your brain health and overall well-being, please join us for the first Healthy Living with Mild Cognitive Impairment Education Program of 2026. It’ll take place on Friday, March 6th from 9:30 to 11:30 Central Time, both virtually over Zoom and at 10 community host sites across Wisconsin. Find more details and information on how to register in the show notes.

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