In this essay, Gary Taubes looks at the growing movement to blame "ultra-processed foods" (UPFs) for obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. While agreeing that many industrially produced foods are unhealthy, he argues that "ultra-processed" is an imprecise label that shifts attention away from nutritional factors that can be studied scientifically—particularly sugar and refined carbohydrates—and toward an ambiguous category based largely on how foods are manufactured.

Taubes traces the rise of the UPF movement through the work of Brazilian epidemiologist Carlos Monteiro and the NOVA classification system. Although diets high in UPFs are consistently associated with poor health, the evidence has not established that industrial processing itself is the cause. Instead, the same foods are typically rich in sugar, refined starches, and other ingredients long associated with metabolic disease, making it difficult to separate processing from nutrient composition.

Taubes argues that the goal should not be to replace one vague dietary concept with another, but to identify the specific components of foods that drive obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease. Calling junk food "ultra-processed" may be a useful political slogan, but it does little to advance the underlying science.