Ultra-processed Foods Gain Guardrails

The conversations and debates around ultra-processed food – what is it, and what isn’t it – just took their first step towards an answer.

This week, the Non-GMO Project introduced a new certification – Non-UPF Verified – to be managed and developed under the newly-established Food Integrity Collective. (ICYMI: UPF is shorthand for ultra-processed food). The certification is teed up for a pilot launch this spring.

The initiative was designed to address the “pervasive dominance” of UPFs in the global food supply, which accounts for over 50% of the calories consumed by Western countries, according to the release. The Non-GMO Project said its research has found that 85% of shoppers claim they want to avoid UPFs, but struggle to consistently identify them.

“The Standard American Diet has become one of the leading risk factors for death worldwide, yet navigating today’s food landscape can feel like an impossible task,” explains Megan Westgate, founder and CEO of the Non-GMO Project and the Food Integrity Collective. “This isn’t by accident.”

“When tobacco companies acquired major food manufacturers in the 1980s, they deliberately applied their expertise in addiction science to food engineering,” she continued. “The result was a new generation of ultra-processed foods designed with the same precision as cigarettes to trigger cravings and override our body’s natural satiety signals.”

Like the Non-GMO Project’s flagship program, Non-UPF Verified will also set clear standards around what qualifies, and what doesn’t, using an “8-Petal Framework for Food Integrity.” Though details on the framework have not yet been published, the press release notes it was developed in collaboration with natural product industry experts.

“When we began addressing GMOs in 2007, we recognized that genetic engineering was just one way industrial food production was distancing us from natural ingredients,” Westgate said. “Today’s ultra-processed foods represent an even deeper departure – taking familiar ingredients and transforming them so fundamentally that our bodies no longer recognize them as food.”

While conversations around ultra-processed food have been ongoing for the past decade or so, they’ve gained significant momentum since the COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on both the global food supply chain and human health. Earlier this month, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order for state agencies to limit the harms of ultra-processed food and directly called for an investigation into synthetic food dyes.

While this new certification marks the first step for the industry, health practitioners have also long had an eye on the crisis and confusion this category has caused for consumers. Just last week, a Boston-based research team at Mass General Brigham launched the site TrueFood, designed to rank over 50,000 grocery items based on how processed they are in an effort to better inform consumers.

In 2023, British physician Chris Van Tulleken published the 394-page book “Ultra-Processed People,” where he digs into the “origins, science, and economics of UPF” and synthesizes various scientific studies charting how “low-cost ingredients, long shelf life and emphatic branding” have led to this category’s prominence in global diets.

In Van Tulleken’s book, he works to define what is UPF and takes a granular look at how many of the most common UPF inputs – largely developed within the past century – have been designed to be addictive despite their long-term effects on the human body remaining unknown and untested.

The release of a UPF label, backed by an established third-party certification body, comes at a time of heightened regulatory scrutiny on the food system as well. In the past year, the FDA has banned Red Dye No. 3, defined the term “healthy” and released a slew of guidance ranging from the definitions for yogurt and plant-based foods to setting action level limits on heavy metals in food designed for babies, toddlers and children.

This certification announcement also follows the debut of another new certification – Seed Oil Safe. The anti-seed oil movement, in addition to ultraprocessed food, industrial agriculture and a handful of other initiatives, have become cornerstones of the Make America Healthy Again discourse.

With the MAHA crowd just days away from taking up official residence in the federal government, it seems this may be our first bite of the ultra-processed food conversation.