“Ultra-Processed” Food Is Everywhere, but Nobody Has Officially Defined It.

Ultra-processed foods get linked to weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, and about any other health conditions that breaks into the news cycle.

However: As of today, there is no enforceable federal definition of "ultra-processed food" in the United States. The term you hear constantly does not yet exist in any US regulation.

"Ultra-Processed"?

There's a classification system called NOVA, developed by researchers that sorts foods into four groups based on how much industrial processing they go through rather than what nutrients they contain. Group 4 is the ultra-processed category. Those are industrially formulated products built from things like refined starches, oils, protein isolates, and additives you wouldn't find in a home kitchen.

That system was built for studying populations, and it's been useful for that. But now regulators are wrestling with how to utilize this label as a legal definition. A granola bar and a soft drink can land in the same group. So can flavored yogurt and candy.

We sat down with Courtney Capazzi, clinical nutritionist at neXendo Wellness, to talk through what the definition fight actually means for the person pushing a cart through the grocery store.

Her answer, in short: the definition matters, and it's still not the whole conversation.

What's your take on the push to define it?

Courtney: I think the current push to define ultra-processed foods is a great step toward helping consumers better understand what they're eating, but the conversation needs to go beyond simply labeling foods as 'good' or 'bad.'

What does "beyond good and bad" look like in practice?

Courtney: Well, we also need to consider food safety, affordability, and access, particularly in communities where food deserts and limited access to fresh, nutritious foods make packaged and shelf-stable foods a practical necessity.

A warning label assumes everyone reading it has an alternative within reach. Plenty of New Yorkers don't.

Courtney Capazzi, MS, CNS

If the nearest full grocery store is two bus transfers away and the corner store is stocked with shelf-stable products, "just avoid ultra-processed food" isn't meaningful or helpful advice.

Canned beans, frozen vegetables, canned fish, shelf-stable milk, those are processed foods keeping real households fed with real nutrition. Any definition that lumps them in with soda has failed the people it was written for.

So what do you actually tell clients to do at the store right now?

Courtney: You don't need a federal register notice to make good decisions. A few things I work on with clients:

• Build most meals from foods that don't need an ingredient list. Vegetables, fruits, beans, eggs, fish, poultry, plain yogurt, whole grains, nuts. Fresh, frozen, or canned all count.

• On packaged foods, read two numbers first: added sugars and sodium. That one habit tracks closely with what the new Dietary Guidelines are warning about, whatever the category ends up being called.

• Watch for the long formulation. Protein isolates, modified starches, flavorings, and emulsifiers stacked ten deep usually mark a product engineered to be hard to stop eating.

• Skip the guilt on individual items. Canned beans, frozen vegetables, and whole grain bread are technically processed and genuinely useful. The pattern of your week matters far more than any single package, and for a lot of budgets and neighborhoods, shelf-stable is how good nutrition actually happens.

• Notice the foods you can't portion. If a product reliably disappears in one sitting no matter what you planned, that's the Hall study playing out in your kitchen. Plan around it instead of testing your willpower every night.

The pattern of your week matters far more than any single package.

Courtney Capazzi, MS, CNS

If you could steer where this whole debate goes, what would you want?

Courtney: As we work toward a clearer definition, I hope the focus remains on making safe, nutritious, minimally processed foods more accessible and affordable, while recognizing the realities of the food environment people are navigating.

Where Data Fits In

Labels tell you about the food. They can't tell you what your body does with it.

That's the piece we add at neXendo. Before our nutrition team builds a plan, we measure rather than assume: a metabolic rate test to establish your actual daily calorie burn, body composition analysis to see muscle and fat rather than just weight, and lab work reviewed by Dr. Anastasios Manessis, MD, FACE, when hormones or blood sugar are part of the picture. Processing level is one input in that plan. Your numbers are the foundation of it.

This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for personalized medical advice. Talk with your healthcare provider or a registered dietitian about your individual nutrition needs.

Sources

1. Food Safety Magazine: 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines "name and shame" highly processed foods

2. FoodNavigator-USA: Guidelines avoid the term "ultra-processed"

3. Food Safety Magazine: FDA sends UPF whitepaper to OIRA, Aug 3, 2026

4. Congress.gov: S. 5026, Childhood Diabetes Reduction Act of 2026 and Senate HELP Committee markup agenda, July 22, 2026

5. FoodNavigator: UPF warning label bill clears Senate panel (12-10 vote)

6. NIH Clinical Center summary of Hall et al. trial and Hall KD et al., Cell Metabolism 2019 (PubMed)

7. Monteiro CA et al., Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutrition, 2019

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