Processed foods are typically considered a primary driver of rising overweight, obesity, and chronic diseases. In particular, ultra-processed foods (UPFs) – industrial food formulations that are high in salt, sugar, and additives – have been increasingly linked to rising rates of diet-related noncommunicable diseases. A recent BMJ article adds to this growing body of evidence, reinforcing calls for policies that reduce their intake.
While this evidence is important, the way it’s translated into policy and practice can be overly simplistic. “Processed” is often treated as a uniform category, rather than a spectrum ranging from minimally processed foods (like canned vegetables or cheese) to highly engineered products with little resemblance to whole foods. As a result, recommendations tend to focus on reducing processed food consumption broadly, without fully accounting for how foods are processed, what ingredients are used, and the contexts in which they are consumed.
Despite growing concerns about UPFs, societal shifts are changing how people access and prepare food. Women’s labor force participation has increased significantly over the past decades, while unpaid care responsibilities remain high. Combined with urbanization and longer working hours, this has led to widespread time constraints around food preparation. Dietary recommendations that rely on time-intensive cooking are increasingly misaligned with how people actually live. In most contexts, convenience is a necessity.
Given this shift, are blanket recommendations to reduce UPF consumption sufficient? Processing itself is not inherently harmful. It can reduce preparation time, extend shelf life, and improve accessibility. It can also enable the incorporation of nutrient-dense ingredients into foods that are easier to store, purchase, and consume. The issue is not whether foods are processed, but how and for what purpose.
Many ultra-processed foods currently on the market are energy-dense and nutrient-poor, shaped by incentives that prioritize shelf stability, taste, and profit margins over nutrition. At the same time, shelf life is central to whether nutrient-dense foods can reach people at all. The perishability of fruits and vegetables remains a major barrier, with significant losses occurring before they ever reach consumers, particularly in low-resource settings.
Processing can help address this. Techniques such as drying, freezing, and canning extend shelf life and improve the transport and storage of nutrient-rich foods. For example, legume-based ready meals, fortified whole grain products, and dehydrated or frozen vegetables can improve access, especially where fresh options are limited, seasonal, or unaffordable. In this sense, value-added products already play a role in delivering nutrition. The challenge is ensuring they are designed with diet quality in mind.
A more productive approach would be to reshape how processed foods are developed and distributed. Improving diet quality at scale will require shifting both investment and incentives toward products that deliver nutritional value. This includes supporting research and development of healthier formulations, strengthening policy tools such as procurement standards and labeling, and investing in local food industries that can produce culturally appropriate, nutrient-dense products.
Policy can shape markets through both incentives and regulation. Public procurement, e.g., school feeding or social protection programs, can create stable demand for healthier products. In parallel, regulatory measures such as limits on salt, sugar, and trans fats, alongside clear food labeling, can shift private sector behavior. Together, these approaches can move markets toward processed foods that support, rather than undermine, diet quality.
Ultimately, improving diets at scale requires solutions that fit into people’s lives. Processed foods are already part of those lives. The question is whether they continue to be designed in ways that undermine health, or whether they are intentionally leveraged to improve it.