A new article in Nature Medicine makes an alternative proposal: Policymakers should define ultra-processed foods by what they are not.
That might sound confusing, said Alyssa Moran, a nutrition policy researcher and epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania who co-authored the piece with Neha Khandpur and Christina Roberto. But she says that this is the simplest way to prevent food companies from skirting policies meant to make American diets healthier.
“Historically, whenever we have a list of products or ingredients that are banned or subject to regulation, companies will simply create new ingredients or products that are very similar in structure and function,” she said, forcing regulators into a perpetual game of Whack-A-Mole. When the Food and Drug Administration banned red dye No. 2 in 1976, for example, companies switched to using red dye No. 3 instead. (The latter ingredient was banned last year.)