• Ultra-processed foods tend to be energy-dense and soft, making them easy to overeat.
• Sam Dicken, a nutrition researcher, tries to avoid UPFs because he naturally has a big appetite.
• He shared how he avoids overeating without checking labels, such as by considering a food's texture.

Sam Dicken is a scientist who researches the potential harms of ultra-processed foods, like store-bought cookies and pizza. Despite what he knows, these kinds of food are often manufactured to be so easy to overeat that even he struggles to control himself around them.

"My appetite is huge," the researcher at the Centre for Obesity Research at UCL in London told Business Insider. "I find it really easy to just keep on eating."

But Dicken has a few clever tricks to practice moderation when eating less nutritious foods, which go beyond simply trying to decipher from the label whether they're ultra-processed.

UPFs are made with ingredients you wouldn't find in a regular kitchen, such as stabilizers and gums, and are highly marketed and shelf-stable.

Part of what makes them so easy to overeat is that this combination can make UPFs hyperpalatable — meaning they contain an appetizing combination of fat, salt, or sugar and are soft in texture, Dicken said. All this can mean they're also energy-dense, containing a large number of calories per gram of food.

Scientists are working to uncover whether it's the effects of additives, the processing, or the nutritional content of UPFs that means a diet high in them is associated with a host of health problems. These include obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers.

UPF is a vague category, so to keep his appetite in check, Dicken thinks about the following three things when deciding what to eat.

Energy density

Dicken needs to eat a large volume of food to feel satisfied, he said, so one thing he really looks out for is how energy-dense a food is.

Fruits and vegetables are not energy-dense because they contain very few calories per gram, meaning he's happy to eat them to his heart's desire, while foods such as chocolate and sugar-sweetened drinks are very energy-dense.

"You can have 1,000 calories of strawberries, and it's a massive pile," he said. "And 1,000 calories of chocolate in front of me, it's a tiny plate."

"That's what I do if I go to a supermarket, I always have a look at the energy density. I know that's a big factor for me," he said.

Texture

UPFs tend to be low in fiber and therefore have a soft, easy-to-eat, texture, Dicken said. Take cheese puffs for example: you can eat a handful in seconds barely even chewing. For this reason, he takes into account how soft a food is when deciding what to eat. If he's hungry, he'll opt for something crunchy such as a carrot or nuts.

When you have a snack that's really energy-dense with a soft texture, "it's very easy to overconsume" he said.

It takes about 20 minutes for the stomach to send a signal to the brain letting it know you're full. Chewing slowly and taking more time with each bite means that the body has enough time to process that it's full before you overeat, Dicken said.

Recommended dietary guidelines

Above all, Dicken tries to make sure he's following UK national dietary guidelines, such as eating five portions of fruits and vegetables a day, limiting salt, sugar, saturated fat, and red meat, and eating plenty of fresh produce.

Trying to consume fewer UPFs can improve your diet, he said, as it typically involves eating and preparing more fresh, whole foods.

But if focusing on UPFs isn't moving you closer to the national dietary guidance, Dicken said he "wouldn't do it."

UPFs are convenient, and if a busy parent relies on supplementing their diet with pre-cooked meats or protein powder, for example, which may be considered ultra-processed, forgoing those may just lead to nutritional gaps in their diet, Dicken said.

• Increasingly, young people with clean diets and healthy lifestyles are getting colon cancer.
• Doctors say diet plays a role in the rising risk, but doesn't tell the whole story.
• We are learning more about ways microplastics, sleep cycles, and our environment may play a role.

At 30, Chris Lopez was hitting his stride. He was attending culinary arts school in Dallas. He was meal prepping and hitting the gym regularly, focused on getting a degree and setting up his life right.

His symptoms were easy to dismiss, at least at first. "I had a real bad stomach ache that was going on for about a month," he told Business Insider. "I thought, 'Oh, maybe I ate some sushi, some fish or something that was undercooked.'"

Except food poisoning doesn't typically last for weeks on end, and doesn't leave blood in your stool. He rapidly lost weight, from 175 pounds to 145 in a single summer — without eating less. "I was pretty much like a skeleton," he said.

Lopez went to his doctor, who eventually decided to do a colonoscopy to learn more. That's when they discovered a "grapefruit-sized" tumor in his colon, he said. Lopez saw the scan and couldn't believe his eyes. Colon cancer? He was so young, healthy, and fit.

Stories like Lopez's are increasingly common. Colon cancer rates are rocketing among athletic young people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and survival rates are dropping.

Take Chris Rodriguez, a 37-year-old improv actor and CrossFit enthusiast who adheres to a high-fiber, high-protein diet, with plenty of veggies. He was 35 when he was diagnosed with stage 3 rectal cancer.

"The question pops in your mind, 'What else was I supposed to do?'," Rodriguez told BI. "That's really the unfortunate thing with a diagnosis like this, is there isn't really much else that you're supposed to do, outside of looking for symptoms."

The most convenient explanations for the rise in young colon cancer are diet and weight. We know diet can influence colorectal cancer risk, and it's something people can fix, to a degree. Plus, our diets have changed. These days we all consume more sugar, more ultra-processed foods, more oil and butter, while moving less.

Still, doctors say the trend we're seeing now defies neat categories of genetics or lifestyle, and it's baffling. Other factors are clearly messing with our digestive systems, but they're tough to pinpoint. Pollution, microplastics, and artificial light — all are pervasive in society, yet very tricky to study.

Thanks to recent research, we are starting to get a better picture of why young colon cancer cases are rising, and we're on the cusp of some pretty big results that may uncover better ways to prevent and treat it.

Young colon cancer is getting deadlier and more common

Something shifted in the 1960s. Everyone born after 1960 has a higher colon cancer risk than previous generations. This phenomenon is known as the "birth cohort effect."

"The rise that we're seeing cannot just be accounted for by inherited differences," Dana Farber colon cancer researcher Dr. Marios Giannakis told BI.

In the US, young colon cancer rates have been rising about 3% every year since the early 1990s, according to National Cancer Institute data.

"We do think since genetics haven't changed, the cancers that are increasing are environmentally based," Dr. William Dahut, the chief science officer at the American Cancer Society, said during a recent briefing to reporters. "Exactly what's doing it is really — more research is needed."

The biggest cancer centers in the US are opening units to investigate this trend. In 2018, Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York opened a first-of-its-kind center for "young-onset" colorectal cancer patients. Dana Farber in Boston, Mass General, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Columbia University Irving Medical Center followed close behind, all opening special programs for young colon cancer cases.

In 2021, the CDC took action, lowering the age of recommended colon cancer screening from 50 to 45. It's an effort to catch more young colon cancer cases sooner, upping the odds of people surviving.

It isn't a uniquely American issue. Wealthy countries, in particular, are seeing similar spikes. New Zealand, Chile, Norway, and Turkey are among 27 countries recording record-high rates of young colon cancer.

Diets matter — to an extent

It's hard to dismiss the role our changing food landscape has played. We are undoubtedly eating worse than our grandparents did 100 years ago.

Take fiber, for example. Found in abundance in whole plant foods like beans, it is a nutrient clearly associated with lower risk of cancer.

Some of the most popular foods in US supermarkets — prepackaged for our convenience — tend to have fiber stripped out during processing, and extra salt, sugar, and oils added in to make them more palatable and shelf-stable.

It started in the aftermath of World War II, when industrial processing and factory farming took hold nationwide.

"Essentially we redeployed what had allowed the United States and allies to prevail in that war to non-military applications, and it completely transformed agriculture," Dr. David Katz, a leading expert in chronic disease prevention and nutrition, told BI.

"You only have a certain total number of calories you can eat per day, and if a higher percentage of those is made up of hamburgers and Pop-Tarts, then a lower percentage ipso facto is made up of lentils and all the other good stuff."

Ultra-processed foods now account for a significant proportion of what we eat. Excess sugar, salt, and chemicals lurk in pasta sauce, breakfast cereals, and salad dressing. Brown bread labeled "heart healthy" can have a higher sugar content than white Wonderbread.

Upsetting the balance of nutrients in our guts has consequences. Compounds that aren't necessarily harmful in moderation, like omega-6 fatty acids from seed oils, take up a disproportionate part of our diets. That can lead to inflammation, infection, and diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and, yes, colon cancer.

Your microbiome is not just about what you eat. It's influenced by myriad factors, from how you were born to your work schedule.

What else is going on?

Doctors and lab scientists who spoke to BI for this story all said the rise in millennials getting colon cancer likely won't be attributed to one single thing.

Shuji Ogino, an epidemiology professor at Harvard Medical School, has been studying young colon cancer cases across the world. He published a study in Nature that showed the early life "exposome" — diet, lifestyle, environment, exposures — has changed dramatically, becoming conducive to cancer.

We've introduced lots of new things to our environment without knowing the ramifications. Now, we're starting to see the long-term effects.

Something as simple as artificial light could play a role. "That's something no human being experienced 200 years ago," Ogino said. Lights allow us to work and socialize at all hours, impacting how our body clocks regulate hormones and metabolism.

Dr. Heinz-Josef Lenz, co-lead of the gastrointestinal cancer program at the University of Southern California cancer center, is also studying how the environment may be damaging our DNA in ways we don't yet understand.

His data so far suggests the trend of more younger folks developing colon cancer isn't genetic, but our genes may affect how we respond to our exposures — the processed food we eat, the antibiotics we take, and the polluted air we breathe.

"When you are 16 years old or 20 years old, you cannot blame it on diet or exercise or obesity — it's just too short," he said. "We're just scratching the surface on better understanding the impact of the parents, particularly in the young onset: was their exposure part of it, or not?"

Here are five things we're learning:

1. Sleep cycle

We can't separate gut health from our internal clock.

Gut bacteria help regulate sleep, which cuts cancer risk.

Emerging evidence suggests that disrupting the circadian rhythm creates problems in the gut that can contribute to colon cancer, according to studies in mice and data in humans. Our sleep can be derailed by late schedules and artificial light from our homes and phones, which may be one factor in rising colon cancer cases.

2. Microplastics in air and water

Increasingly, researchers are finding evidence that microplastics play a negative role in fertility.

They can also be pro-inflammatory, driving diseases like cancer and obesity, hurting lungs, and possibly helping cancer to thrive in the body.

A new evidence roundup from researchers at UCSF analyzed 22 studies that compared microplastic exposure to health problems in mice and people, and found that all of them showed some harm.

"We basically saw this continuous effect that the more you get exposed to it, so in our environment, the more it gets produced, the greater the health harm," Nicholas Chartres, one of the study's authors and a former head of the science and policy team at UCSF's program on reproductive health and the environment, told BI.

Chartres says the time is now to act to reduce our microplastic exposure, and it must be done at a policy level. At home, Chartres runs around the house throwing out his kids' plastic toys, but he knows he's playing a losing game of environmental whack-a-mole.

"We don't need to have specific quantification of the level of harm, there's enough here to show that they're certainly contributing," he said.

3. What your parents were exposed to

Lenz is conducting research that aims to unravel why so many Hispanic patients in Southern California seem to be especially at risk of developing early colon cancer.

His team is studying cancer patients' blood, DNA damage, lifestyles, and ZIP codes to pinpoint where their exposure risks might be coming from, whether it be overuse of antibiotics, pollution that families are exposed to, or something else.

"It could be an epigenetic event, not only from the patient itself but from the family, from the parents and their exposure," he said. "Epigenetics can be influenced by lifestyle and by exposure to chemicals, or whatever it is that will actually react."

4. Antibiotics

It is well established that antibiotics disrupt the gut microbiome, killing off some beneficial bacteria. And humans aren't the only antibiotic consumers.

Most of the antibiotics (73%) in use worldwide are for meat production, recent research suggests. Some meat advertised as antibiotic-free has failed independent testing.

Red meat consumption ups a person's colon cancer risk, and so does antibiotic use, but these two factors aren't necessarily separate.

5. C-section

Newborns are exposed to trillions of their mother's microbes as they travel through the birth canal, giving an infant's microbiome an initial boost. Kids who are delivered through the abdomen via cesarean section don't get those same health benefits.

Recent research from Sweden suggests girls who are born via c-section have a higher risk of developing young colon cancer than those born vaginally.

Major colon cancer discoveries coming in 2025-2026

In 2024, a group of international researchers mapped 1.6 million cells in the gut to create the most comprehensive picture to date — the "gut atlas."

"It's rare that any one study squeezes out all the relevant biological insights," Ivan Vujkovic-Cvijin, a professor of medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, who was not involved in the study, told Business Insider.

"By identifying which components of tissue function are dysregulated in disease, the scientific community can design drugs to restore those functions," he said.

There's more to come. Multiple big, well-funded multinational studies are underway, including a US-UK collaboration that's giving out interdisciplinary cancer grants to teams around the world. The studies are expected to release results this year and next.

2 ways to reduce your risk today

Until we know better what's going on, researchers and clinicians say there are two steps you can take to reduce colon cancer risk.

First, control what you can control.

"Let's focus on the stuff we can change," Dr. Cassandra Fritz, a gastroenterologist and colon cancer researcher at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, tells her patients.

That means no smoking, regular exercise, less alcohol, reducing your intake of ultra-processed snacks and processed meats, and no sugary beverages — factors directly linked with colon cancer risk. You could also consider microwaving food in glass or ceramic instead of plastic.

Second, know the signs of colon cancer and do not be complacent about them. Many young cases are diagnosed too late, making treatment complicated.

These four symptoms can occur up to 18 months before a colon cancer diagnosis:

• Abnormal diarrhea that lasts for weeks
• Persistent abdominal pain
• Bloody stool (red, magenta, or black)
• Iron deficiency anemia (determined by a blood test)

Don't fear the process of getting checked, experts told BI. Anyone dealing with these persistent symptoms can ask their doctor for a fecal immunochemical test (FIT) that is noninvasive and costs just a few dollars.

"If there are symptoms which could be associated with colon cancer, make sure you get the screening and don't just accept that they're saying 'It's unlikely' or 'I've never seen it,'" Lenz said.

When it's spotted early, colon cancer is a very survivable disease.

• Ultra-processed foods are associated with all kinds of poor health outcomes.
• But they're probably not all equally bad.
• An ongoing study suggests adding more high-volume foods into your ultra-processed diet could help.

It's no secret that ultra-processed foods aren't the greatest for our health.

"What we're trying to figure out is, very specifically, what is it about ultra-processed foods that seems to drive over-consumption and weight gain?" metabolism researcher Kevin Hall recently told Business Insider.

Hall works at the National Institutes of Health, where he is conducting an unusual experiment. He brings people into a tightly controlled food lab for one month, and tests out how four different diets — one unprocessed, and three ultra-processed, but all with the same levels of key nutrients — impact people's hunger, fullness, calorie consumption, weight gain, and fat loss.

While his study is still ongoing, he's been sharing some initial results with colleagues in the US and in Europe.

The early findings offer some hints about why UPFs can not only lead to weight gain but also make it hard to dump fat. The study is also showing that simple tweaks could make a huge difference. Perhaps, Hall says, you don't need to cut out ultra-processed products to have a satisfying, relatively healthy plate of food.

On an ultra-processed diet, patients gained 2 lbs a week

When Hall's patients switched diets, their calorie intake shifted dramatically.

During their week of unprocessed meals, full of fresh vegetables, beans, legumes, and whole grains, participants ate an average of 2,700 calories per day. They also tended to lose a little weight, about a pound of fat.

That changed when they switched to an 80% ultra-processed diet. Same amount of food offered, same levels of sugar, salt, fat, carbs, protein, and fiber on the plate.

The patients ended up consuming more food to achieve the same level of fullness — ingesting about 3,700 calories per day on average. On ultra-processed foods, the patients' weight shot up by over two pounds in a single week.

The results, while still preliminary, are even more striking than the last experiment Hall did like this, when patients ate 500 extra calories per day on ultra-processed diets.

People might not even feel like they're eating more when they consume those ultra-processed meals. Generally speaking, each bite of ultra-processed food is far more calorie-dense than a homemade meal.

Adding moisture made ultra-processed meals 'healthier'

Cutting out ultra-processed foods isn't realistic in the US, Hall said. But what if you could make a Western diet less bad?

Hoping to reduce people's weight gain and improve satiety with fewer calories, Hall (and his team of clinical chefs) devised two new diets to test this time.

Both diets were 80% ultra-processed but with some crucial adjustments.

In the first new diet, researchers lowered the amount of what are called "hyper-palatable foods" — foods that combine sugar, salt, and fat in ways that aren't typically seen in nature (think: rich, salty ice cream, a donut, or veggies in cream sauce).

Addiction researcher Tera Fazzino coined the term "hyper-palatable" as a way to collect data on the irresistibility of junk food. She hypothesizes that hyper-palatable ultra-processed foods might mess with our minds, and drive people to eat more than they would otherwise.

But that didn't ring true in Hall's new study. The patients who cut out hyper-palatable foods only saved themselves 200 calories a day, and gained over 1 lb in a week.

In the second diet, the chefs lowered the amount of hyper-palatable foods again, but also upped the moisture of people's ultra-processed meals, making them less energy-dense. Often, this meant adding more high-volume, non-starchy vegetables like a side salad to the ultra-processed plate.

"Basically, add very low-calorie mass," Hall told BI. "That typically is non-starchy vegetables."

On an ultra-processed diet with fewer energy-dense foods and less hyper-palatable items, people lost about a pound in one week — just like on the unprocessed diet. They also consumed about 830 fewer calories per day, very close to the 1,000 fewer calories consumed on the unprocessed diet.

"I thought, OK, gosh, we've solved this problem, this is great," Hall said during a presentation at Imperial College London in November, when he first revealed the new results.

There was a catch, though.

"A little bit of a monkey wrench was thrown in because we decided to look at the body composition changes," Hall said.

The nut we haven't cracked: Achieving the right kind of weight-loss

Only people on the 100% unprocessed diet lost body fat.

On the "healthier" ultra-processed diet, people lost about a pound of weight in a week, but it was coming from fat-free mass. That means muscle, bone, tissue, or maybe just water weight.

Hall is not yet sure why this is happening, but he says it could have to do with the "digestability" of the ultra-processed foods — in other words, how they are handled inside our bodies, compared to whole foods.

"If we can learn what those mechanisms are, then the really smart people who are ingenious food technologists and scientists can maybe re-engineer some of these foods," he told BI.

"There's so many narratives and hypotheses that sound reasonable, but until you actually do the studies to test that, then you don't know."

5 simple ways to make your meals healthier today

While it's still too early to say for sure exactly why people eat more calories and store more fat on ultra-processed diets, Hall says we can already begin to use his early findings to make some educated guesses.

Here are some tips:

• Bulk up a meal, any meal, by adding some vegetables to your plate. Could be salad. Could be a side of cooked broccoli or some carrots. They don't have to be fresh. Frozen is also just fine.

• Try some beans. You could whip up a hearty longevity-friendly minestrone soup, but if you don't have the time even ultra-processed refried beans are a decent option.

• Pick out whole grains, like oatmeal, brown rice, and quinoa.

• Pay attention to how much added sugar is in items like yogurt, granola, and salad dressing, and try to limit how much of it you consume. (Olive oil makes a great dressing, and it's filled with healthy fats and beneficial plant compounds.)

• Prioritize the satiating, nutrient-rich foods we know are associated with good health, like eggs (even the ultra-processed liquid kind might be fine).

"It's possible that there's some weird additive or some ingredient in that food that is not good for you," Hall said. "We don't have the science on that yet, but applying what we do know, I think you can still make educated choices."

• 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

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

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."

• Ultra-processed foods, which contain additives, have been linked to cancer, diabetes, and depression.
• Nutritionist Rob Hobson tried to eliminate them from his diet as much as possible last year.
• Now, he incorporates them into his diet in a way that works for him.

Since deciding to cut down on ultra-processed foods a year ago, nutritionist Rob Hobson has developed a more "realistic" view of how they fit into a healthy diet, he told Business Insider.

UPFs have made headlines this year as public awareness grew of the potential health risks of eating too many. Studies have linked a diet high in UPFs to a higher risk of 32 illnesses, including type two diabetes, cancer, depression, and cardiovascular disease.

UPFs tend to be highly marketed, shelf-stable, and hyper-palatable, making them easy to overeat, Hobson previously told Business Insider. Soda, candy, and fast food are obvious examples.

At first, Hobson, who is based in the UK, tried to eliminate UPFs from his diet as much as possible and to cook everything from scratch. "I was like a vigilante," he said. But now he incorporates them into his diet in a way that works for him. "I eat less ultra-processed food, but in a way that still makes it easy and convenient to eat. So there's certain foods now that I don't worry too much about, the healthier UPFs," he said.

Hobson, who still limits his intake, shared three changes he's made.

Healthier' UPFs for cooking

Cooking from scratch three times a day simply became too time-consuming, Hobson said. So now he uses some "healthier" UPFs in his cooking to "make life easier."

Previously Hobson would have been strict about only making a pasta sauce from canned tomatoes and fresh produce, for example, but now if he's strapped for time or energy, he's happy to pick up a pre-made sauce from the store. However, he still checks labels and looks for the items with the fewest ingredients.

"I still believe the first port of call is cooking everything as much as you can from scratch. But I'm not going to give myself a hard time about buying a tomato sauce, I'll just buy the best one I possibly can," he said.

Some UPFs are nutritious

Foods like packaged wholemeal bread, and baked beans, which are popular in the UK, might be considered ultra-processed because they contain additives, but unlike soda and cookies, they do have nutritional value.

"These foods still have a lot of fiber. They still contain protein. But they do contain a few additives," Hobson said.

He includes UPFs he considers healthier in his diet if he doesn't have time to cook from scratch or simply is craving them, he said. But he'll still aim to make it a balanced meal by adding some vegetables, a side salad, or some grains.

Eat unprocessed — no cooking required

Over the past year, Hobson learned that putting different foods together on a plate is the easiest way for him "to eat unprocessed."

"Just putting plates together rather than thinking you have to create a proper big meal with lots of ingredients," works well, he said. Cooking a piece of fish or chicken and pairing it with some potatoes and vegetables is simpler than following a recipe and making, say, a pasta dish or a curry, he said. Hobson often adds bags of pre-cooked grains, too.

"It's great to spend time in the kitchen when you have the time, but then when you don't, you have to find all these ways of eating that are really simple," he said.

• Melissa Hemsley's cookbook offers recipes to reduce ultra-processed food intake.
• Ultra-processed foods are linked to health risks like cardiovascular disease and cancer.
• Hemsley's recipes include white chicken chili, noodle salad, and no-bake peanut bars.

If cutting down on ultra-processed food is on your 2025 goals list, finding tasty new recipes is a big help.

Melissa Hemsley is a chef whose latest cookbook, "Real Healthy," is designed to help people "unprocess" their diets.

The recipes are packed with vegetables and designed for those who are short of time.

Ultra-processed foods have come to the fore of public health consciousness in recent years, as research increasingly points to the potential health risks of UPFs, including cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Hemsley recommends dishes including a white chicken chili with peppers and beans, a zingy vegetarian noodle salad, and no-bake peanut butter chocolate oat bars.

White chicken chili

Hemsley said: "A tomato-less chili, hence the name 'white chili'. I use yellow peppers here to keep the chili 'white' but use whatever color you can find. I like to serve the toppings separately and let everyone help themselves. In terms of the beans, use whatever white beans you like, such as cannellini or butter beans. I find sweetcorn is always worth keeping in the freezer, but if you've got canned corn, then drain, rinse, and add it right at the end."

Serves: Four

Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

Ingredients

• 4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
• 2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra if needed
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• 2 yellow peppers, diced
• 4 garlic cloves, finely sliced
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1⁄4 teaspoon cayenne pepper or chile flakes, to taste
• 1.2 litres vegetable or chicken broth
• 2 x 400-gram tins of white beans, drained and rinsed
• 200 grams frozen corn
• Juice of 1 lime, plus a little zest if you like
• Sea salt and black pepper

Optional toppings

• Soured cream or yogurt
• Fresh cilantro and/or scallions onions, sliced
• Sliced avocado
• Sliced radishes or cucumber
• Lime wedges
• Jarred jalapeño slices or chile flakes

Method

1. Season the chicken thighs on both sides with salt. Heat the olive oil in a large pot and, once warm, add the chicken thighs, skin-side down. Cook for 10 to 12 minutes over a medium-high heat until very well browned, then turn and cook on the other side for 2 to 3 minutes. Lift out of the pot and set aside on a large plate.
2. The chicken should have given out plenty of fat but if not, add a splash of olive oil to the pot and, once warm, add the onions, peppers, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Fry for about 12 minutes over a medium heat until very soft, stirring every so often. Add the garlic, fry for a minute, then add the cumin, oregano, and cayenne or chile flakes and fry for 2 minutes, stirring regularly.
3. Return the chicken thighs to the pot and pour in the stock. Simmer for 25 minutes, then add the beans and continue to cook for another 10 minutes.
4. Remove the chicken thighs once cooked through and take the meat off the bones and shred. Set aside, discarding the chicken skin if you wish. Use a potato masher or the back of your wooden spoon to crush roughly a third of the beans (this will help thicken the chili).
5. Add the frozen corn, then cook for 5 minutes or so until tender. Remove from the heat, add the chicken, lime juice, plus a little zest if you like, and taste for seasoning.
6. Ladle into bowls and finish with the toppings you like.

Big veg noodle salad with lime, ginger, and peanut dressing

Hemsley said: "Even in the colder months, I think a big noodle salad is always a great thing to have up our sleeves. In the depths of winter, in and among all the cheesy bakes and big soups and stews, I crave fresh, zingy, crunchy salads like this. Use any noodles you like, even spaghetti would work if that's what you've got. I love buckwheat (soba) noodles. Swap the peanuts and peanut butter for cashews or almonds if you prefer. Do the lime trick to release more juice by rolling the limes on the kitchen counter before you slice them in half."

Serves: Two

Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

• 2 nests of noodles
• 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
• 2 big handfuls of raw peanuts
• 1 large carrot, cut into ribbons with a peeler or cut into thin strips with a knife
• 1⁄4 sweetheart cabbage, very thinly sliced
• 1 small apple or pear, cored, and cut into matchsticks
• 1⁄2 small cucumber, diced

For the dressing:

• 2 tablespoons smooth or crunchy peanut butter
• 2 big limes: zest of 1 and juice of both
• 2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
• Thumb of fresh ginger, finely grated
• Pinch of chile flakes
• 2 teaspoons maple syrup
• Sea salt and black pepper

Method

1. For the dressing, whisk all the ingredients in a small bowl or shake in a jam jar. Taste for seasoning.
2. Cook the noodles according to the packet instructions, then drain and rinse immediately with cold water. Toss the noodles with the sesame oil and set aside.
3. Toast the peanuts in a dry frying pan over a medium heat for 3 to 5 minutes, shaking the pan every so often, until golden.
4. In a large bowl, toss together the noodles, carrot, cabbage, apple or pear and roughly half the dressing. Slowly add more splashes of dressing if you like, tossing as you go, until everything is nicely coated. Top with the cucumber and peanuts.

Chocolate peanut butter (no-bake) bars

Hemsley said: "A no-bake family favorite treat. Pretty irresistible but if you don't devour them over a few days, they will keep for a week in a sealed container. Store in the fridge in warmer months. If catering to any nut allergies, swap the ground almonds for more oats and switch the nut butter for pumpkin seed butter. If you have a preferred nut butter, try that — I love a cashew butter but keep it to the smooth variety for a silkier texture. Look out for 60% minimum cocoa solids for your chocolate."

Makes: 16

Time: 20 minutes, plus setting time

Ingredients

• 250 grams smooth peanut butter
• 100 grams ground almonds
• 100 grams porridge oats
• 6 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• A little pinch of sea salt

For the chocolate layer

• 180 grams dark chocolate, roughly broken
• 1 tablespoon smooth peanut butter
• Flaky sea salt, for sprinkling

Optional topping

• 2 handfuls of toasted peanuts

Method

1. Line a small baking pan or dish (about 15 x 8cm or square equivalent) with greaseproof paper, making sure it comes up high enough on the sides so that you can lift the mixture out of the pan once it's set.
2. Mix the peanut butter, ground almonds, oats, maple syrup, vanilla, and salt together in a bowl. Transfer to the lined pan, pressing down with the back of a spoon or spatula to make it even and compact.
3. For the chocolate layer, melt the chocolate in a bain-marie (a heatproof bowl set over a pan of very lightly simmering water, making sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water). Once melted, stir through the peanut butter and pour this evenly over the base. If topping with the whole peanuts, scatter these over the chocolate layer. Sprinkle over a little pinch of flaky sea salt.
4. Set in the fridge for 1 hour or until firm, then cut into 16 pieces to serve.

• Bernie Sanders is taking on ultra-processed food in his final weeks leading the Senate health panel.
• Sanders wants the US to catch up with other countries, which have cigarette-style warning labels for food.
• He sees a potential opportunity to work with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on this.

In his final weeks leading the Senate health committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders is taking on "big food."

Sanders led a hearing Thursday to interrogate how ultra-processed foods affect our bodies, and how they are regulated. He is campaigning for legislation that would slap warning labels on the front of ultra-processed foods — a step other countries took years ago.

Speaking to Business Insider on Tuesday, Sanders said he sees warning labels as a necessary first step to influence food manufacturers in America to make healthier products, especially for kids.

"When a parent goes out shopping, they need to know that there are products that are just not healthy for their kids," Sanders said. "In the United States, we have not reached that stage. Other countries are doing a lot better than we are."

Obesity has more than tripled among children since the 1970s, per CDC data, and research suggests ultraprocessed foods play a significant role, though it's not clear why. What we do know is that foods high in added sugars, fats, and sodium make up a majority of the calories we consume, and drive us to eat more.

"Our kids are not healthy enough," Sanders said.

Major food companies say new labels would be expensive to produce, and that the cost would be passed onto consumers. Some argue mandatory warning labels would violate their right to free speech. They say we should stick with the current system: a voluntary policy, where companies can put health warnings on the front of products if they see fit.

A shift may be coming, in part driven by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's pick for HHS secretary who has promised to "make America healthy again" and clean up the US food system. Kennedy's message has resonated with voters as consumer demand grows for healthier food — more natural, more transparent, less processed.

Food giants are nervous about Kennedy's reign, Jerold Mande, CEO of the advocacy group Nourish Science and a senior member of the USDA during the Obama administration, told Business Insider.

"Having worked on this for decades, the level of response from companies has exceeded anything I've seen" since Michelle Obama's campaign, Mande said. "They're deeply concerned that this is going to be a change."

Sanders said he is ready to ride the MAHA wave, if that's what it will take to clean up American diets.

The pitch: Bring the US up to speed with other countries

Sixteen other countries have mandatory, front-of-package warning labels, including most of Latin America, plus Canada, Iran, Sri Lanka, and Singapore.

Sanders looks at the US's southern neighbor, Mexico, as inspiration. During our interview, he pulled up a photo of two bottles of Coca-Cola, one sold in the US and the other in Mexico. The Mexican bottle has big black octagonal boxes that say "excess sugars," "excess calories," and "caffeine warning, not recommended for children."

"That's kind of common sense," Sanders said. "I think if most parents knew that there were 10 or 15 teaspoons of sugar in this drink, I suspect many parents would say, 'Sorry, Joe, you can't have that.' It would put pressure on the industry to start producing healthier products."

The Coca Cola Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the American Beverage Association said the industry has taken voluntary steps to curb sugar for kids, such as not advertising to children and removing full-calorie products from schools.

According to research conducted in these countries, it can work — if the front-of-package labeling is clear.

In Chile, which has similar black boxes to Mexico, people dramatically reduced the amount of sugar-, fat-, and sodium-heavy products they were buying after labels changed. Companies have also reformulated their products in the country to avoid a warning label, cutting sugar, fat, and sodium levels.

How the US can get this done remains a mystery, Katherine Miller, founder of nutrition advocacy group Table 81, told Business Insider.

"I mean, there are 20 different pieces of the federal government that regulate our eggs," Miller said. "How do we really think we're going to get front of the label, the front-of-the-package labeling in a short period of time that will align the scientific community, the food systems community, the health community, and corporations? That doesn't feel realistic."

The US is already testing out new food labels that flag bad ingredients

The Food and Drug Administration has designed two options for what these new labels could look like on the front of food and drinks.

One version would flag a product as "high in" sugar, sodium, or fat, if it exceeds 20% of the daily recommended limit. Another version would use a color-coded system to grade the levels of sugar, sodium, and fat in the product ("low" for under 5%, "high" for over 20%, "medium" for anything in between).

The agency has spent months testing both options in focus groups.

Sanders says it doesn't go far enough.

He proposed legislation that would force food companies to put a stop sign on anything ultra-processed or high-sugar, similar to cigarettes.

Sanders — who says he is "guilty as anybody else" when it comes to eating and snacking — begrudges how difficult it is to make healthy choices and how easy it is to accidentally ingest copious amounts of fat, sodium, or sugar.

"Some years ago, I was thirsty and I picked up a bottle of something, it was a juice, and I gulped it down as usual," Sanders recalled in the interview. "A little while later, my stomach, I really felt very queasy. I looked at the label and I saw the amount of sugar that was in it."

It was a lot higher than he expected from a quick glance at the bottle.

"The industry has done a very good job in selling us products that are cheap to produce, that make us unhealthy. And that's something Congress has got to deal with."

The problem: A game of whack-a-mole with food companies

The argument against front-of-package labeling, from a health perspective, is that it could delay more concrete action.

It could also lead to unexpected consequences, Mande said.

In the '90s, when he helped design the original Nutrition Facts panel, the goal was low fat. A flurry of new research had recently come out showing fat was linked to heart disease.

Food manufacturers complied, cutting fat from their products — but often swapped it for something else. Take Snackwell's, a now defunct diet cookie brand that offered the pleasure of a sweet treat without the consequences. Problem was, the brand replaced fat with refined carbohydrates.

"We didn't anticipate the harm it would cause," Mande said. Three decades later, health advocates are trying to cut refined carbs in food due to the increased risk of diabetes.

Sanders said front-of-package labeling is the best card we have to play right now.

"I think it's one thing that you've got to do," he said. "It would put pressure on the industry to start producing healthier products."

Next step: Teeing up RFK Jr.

The Senate hearing saw more bipartisan agreement than advocates expected.

"Not one Senator defended the food industry. Big food is in big tobacco territory," Mande said.

Still, it comes at an inflection point. FDA Commissioner Rob Califf is on his way out, and there's no knowing whether his nominated successor, Marty Makary, will want to follow through on his plans for front-of-package labels.

Plus, it's unclear if Makary will have the funds to do so, since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he will gut the FDA if he is confirmed as HHS Secretary. (Kennedy did not respond to a request for a comment.)

Sanders hopes this discussion will harness the buzz around Kennedy's MAHA movement to make warning labels a policy priority.

"When Kennedy talks about an unhealthy society, he's right. The amount of chronic illness that we have is just extraordinary," Sanders said.

"Anybody with a brain in his or her head wants to deal with this issue, to get to the cause of the problem. I think processed food and the kind of sugar and salt that we have in products that our kids and adults are ingesting is an important part of addressing that crisis."