I mean, he's not presenting the evidence here in a hacker news comment, but that doesn't mean the evidence doesn't exist. There are a bunch of different categories of stabilizers, and only some of them have antimicrobial properties -- most are about maintaining moisture and loaf volume over time.

There are three substances that are predominantly used to inhibit mold growth, though: calcium propionate, potassium sorbate, and sodium benzoate.

The first two are extremely well understood and considered safe globally. The third is still considered safe, but might have some interactions with vitamin C that lead to benzene formation to the tune of several parts per billion. The FDA considers this safe, and has for some time.

So you dislike vinegar, salt, and any fermented foods that suppress microbial agents?

> I'm suspicious of all antimicrobial agents' effects on gut microbiota

Boy do I wish people would talk like this, instead of the "ultra-processed foods" bullshit.

The Atlantic had a stupid as hell article a few days ago with a title that really boils the entire op down: Nobody Knows What Ultra-Processed Food Is"

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/08/kennedy-ultraproc...

"Ultra-Processed Food" is a phrase. It is not a thing. If you want to use it for its media traction, and "nobody knows what it is," define it before you use it.

Instead, everybody has gone for "it is so mysterious," then goes on to cite a bunch of studies about "ultra-processed foods," treating it as a category that categorical statements can be made about.

Name the chemicals, name the processes. They don't because these chemicals and processes are endorsed by massive conglomerates who can pull advertising and lobbying money. When you're vague as hell about everything, it's a case-by-case basis that only affects people who can't bribe as well as others.

And about the people talking about sugars, salt and fats crammed into everything, I'm convinced they never cook. That's taste, and you can pour it in yourself just as well as a corporation. The reason people love it is because it tastes good. Salt isn't even bad for you, it's in fact very, very good for you because it makes micronutrient-rich foods palatable.

Arguing that standard manufactured foods and foods marketed to children are too rich is a different argument, and most importantly for this conversation has nothing to do with the ultraprocessed foods question. Massive food companies are perfectly happy to remove all the fats and sugars from your food and replace them with some weird alcohol sugar or a new form of teflon they just invented a week ago, and to charge you a premium for the privilege of eating it. They literally did that throughout the 80s and 90s.

The narrative intentionally confusing what the above refers to as "hyperpalatability" (a term which is as good as any) with "ultra-processed" (a propaganda term) is a gift to the food industry. It in fact even favors monopolies who can afford to put in the bizarre chemical constructions they'll use as alternatives, and to pay regulators to look the other way.

"Ultra-processed foods" is a phrase meant for advertising - even the prefix "ultra-" reminds me of a cigarette ad, describing the filter. The filter was a device which ostensibly makes cigarettes healthier, but instead allows you to smoke far more than you would otherwise, and leads to worse health outcomes. Isn't smoking bad? Smoke our ultra-filtered cigarettes and breathe easy!

> hyperpalatability is the main issue

Hyperpalatability is a different issue. The main issue is that our foods are chemical factories. Turning it into a "food is too good" problem is just a trick to blame the consumer for not being mature enough to forgo pleasure.

Food being good is not a crisis. Xylitol giving people heart attacks might be. Ingredients concocted in a lab never being studied at all until someone sues is a problem. Shifting the argument to "cheeseburgers are bad because they're good" is a really obvious distraction.

There is literally no profit in making foods "hyperpalatable." Food companies would be just as happy selling you food that tastes like shit. If anything, in actuality commercial food has become worse and less palatable over time due to substitutions of cheaper ingredients. The argument is being shifted from an important one about power to a dumb moral panic. The people who love this are orthorexics who love telling people how their health is their own fault because they are self-indulgent. There is nothing more self-indulgent and self-praising than this discourse.

That argument is hyperpalatable to orthorexics.

I think it literally is the claim the article is trying to make, but "UPF" is the on-trend term, despite the fact that most UPFs aren't engineered for hyperpalatability. It's a problem!

every once in a while i wonder why miracle berries can't be leveraged at scale to make ultranutritious food taste great. but it always feels like a thought with an obvious answer i am too stupid to deduce.

Nobody seems to have noticed the "product" next to "yogurt":

>> * Almost all yogurt products, flavored or otherwise

If we weren't on HN I'd say that's a subtle engagement hack calculated to generate maximum confusion and irate debate in the comments below. But we're on HN and good faith etc.

So, yes, "yogurt products" are all going to be ultra-processed not least because they will have to destroy the gel matrix of yogurt to incorporate whatever other ingredients they must like fruit juice or sugar, stabilisers, emulsifiers etc. Actually I guess they must include the stabilisers and emulsifiers because they mix in flavours and therefore destroy the yogurt gel matrix, which would otherwise result in an unpleasant gloopy mess.

Speaking of course in all this from the privilege of a summer in Greece where I've start every morning since June with a tub of 150g of fresh (not strained) goat's milk yogurt with the skin on and with a (European) teaspoonfull of honey.

Not healthy, you understand. Not with all the saturated fats and sugars. But, boy, is it palatable.

It sort of illustrates the uselessness of the terms. Yogurt is made by sterilizing (likely homogenized) milk and introducing microorganisms that carry out some desired chemical reactions. They produce lactic acid, which is a stabilizer.

Everyone apparently knows that those are good things, so they don't count.

No. And the way you're wrong about this is important. Any plain whole milk yogurt thickened or stabilized with starches or pectin is a UPF; Kroger's Plain Whole Milk, for instance, is a UPF and it isn't sweetened.

(For what it's worth, I really dislike yogurt and would not in 1000 years consume a sweetened yogurt product, though I do work skyr into every other meal these days for protein-maxxing reasons).

Flavored yoghurt is often candy adjacent, but sneeks under the radar as a health food "It's probiotic!"

Yeah, this is totally true. A Greek yogurt is considered minimally processed, not ultra processed. The problem is, far and away, the majority of yogurt sold is fruit-flavored yogurt, which is considered ultra-processed. Icelandic yogurt and Greek yogurt are premium niche yogurts.

I guess all I'm saying is that for the majority of people eating yogurt, it's an ultra-processed food.

It’s a silly category to relate to health because, for example, meat replacements are UPF but are also typically much healthier than meat. Obviously that’s not always true, but most of the time it is. Basically all Americans can benefit from eating less meat, especially red meat.

Ultra-processing is not just used to make more calorie-dense palatable food. It’s also used to make less calorie-dense food and enrich food with vitamins and macros you need for healthy living, like fiber.

I mean, compare the ultra-processed high fiber tortillas to the natural tortillas. The high fiber ones have less calories, less carbs, are more satiating, and are overall healthier. They also taste worse, I.e. are less palatable.

Ultra-processing and palatability are really orthogonal IMO. You can use processing to make palatable food, but you don’t have to. Look at traditional fast food - burgers, fries, fried chicken. You can trivially make any of that with no processing. It’s still unhealthy and ultra palatable. Cutting up a chicken at home and deep-frying it doesn’t magically make it healthy.

Or go one step further, and look at the frying itself. We have access to processed refined oils. But if you don’t use them and go the old fashioned way, with lard frying, is it healthier or less palatable?

No, actually, it’s tastier and much less healthy. You get 10x the saturated fat and way more calories.

And I’ll get ahead of the anti-science anti-seed-oil people who just read that. We know, for a fact, that eating more saturated fat increases your risk of heart disease and cancer. Just because something is naturally or minimally processed does not make it healthy, health is much more complex than that.

> The necessity of stabilization tells you that the food is likely labile (as otherwise, why would they have needed to stabilize it?) — and therefore is unhealthy to be consumed on a continuous basis. (Unless it's milk and you're a baby.)

You're completely lost me here. You're asserting that because food goes bad, it shouldn't be consumed on a regular basis. That just doesn't track, even a little bit.

Maybe your assertion hinges on the definition of "continuous basis"? I don't know what that means, but, taking it face value, it sounds like nothing should be consumed on a continuous basis other than air.

> The bread you bake at home is ultra-processed; you're the one who ultra-processed it!

This doesn't track either. The common Nova classification for ultra processing leans heavily on the kinds of processes that happen in factories. It's the flour itself that makes bread ultra-processed, since the flour is ultra-processed. When I realized that the four-ingredient bread I make at home for my family is considered ultra-processed, I started paying a lot less attention to the entire discussion.

I wore a glucose monitor for a few months and tested my blood sugar response to different foods. The worst spike I ever got was American Chinese food: rice+sugary sauce. Brown rice vs white rice makes no difference.

Ice cream didn’t make much of a spike - all that fat. Waffle with maple syrup and peanut butter is completely different profile than waffle without peanut butter.

Most important thing for my blood sugar was portion size. Eat a lot, get a big spike.

Frustrating to me that people argue so much about “processed” vs “unprocessed” food. The real issue I believe is portion sizes.

By this definition, a cooked egg is ultra processed, but a raw egg isn’t?

> Vegetable oil is often the #1 ingredient and is not even close to having the same density as breast milk

Density of what?

That’s why we cook food. Cooked grain is way more nutritious than raw grain. The kitchen is an external stomach.

Seems like that would include all fermented foods.

> * Ultra-processed plant-based meat replacement

There, fixed that for you.

I think that it's also literally all plant-based meat replacers (meaning products intended to mimic meat, rather than just replacing meat with plants).

They're not 'highly processed' in a way that makes them contribute to obesity any more than the same thing made at home.