This article, HFCS, Ultra-Processed Foods, and Our Health, is intended for general educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. If you have concerns about diabetes, blood pressure, your liver, or your diet, please consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes.

Let me tell you why this one isn’t academic for me.

I have watched diabetes and high blood pressure move through my family like a quiet storm. Two of my sisters have been diagnosed. A nephew we lost far too young. A granddaughter facing dialysis before her 35th birthday. These aren’t statistics to me. They are names. They are birthdays. In some cases, they are empty chairs at the table.

So if you hear passion in my voice, understand where it comes from. Not anger. Not conspiracy. Love, and a desire to ask hard questions about the food environment we all inherited. This conversation isn’t about blame. It’s about awareness, because awareness gives us back a choice.

And here’s the thing that should bother all of us: two of the biggest changes to what we eat, high fructose corn syrup and ultra-processed foods, were never something the public asked for. Nobody stood up and demanded an alternative to real food. It was handed to us. Let’s talk about who did the handing, and what it’s doing to our bodies.

First, what even counts as “ultra-processed”?

Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations made mostly or entirely from substances extracted from foods, then loaded with additives and ingredients you would never find in a home kitchen. They go through heavy chemical and physical transformation, extrusion, molding, pre-frying, until almost nothing about them resembles the whole food they started as. That definition comes from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Now sit with the scale of it. Johns Hopkins estimates that nearly 75% of the U.S. food supply is ultra-processed. More than half the calories the average American adult eats come from these foods. In children, it climbs past 60%. And the research ties them to a long list of outcomes: obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiometabolic disease, several cancers, gastrointestinal disorders, asthma, anxiety, depression, cardiovascular events, and all-cause mortality. Look at that list closely. It reads almost exactly like the CDC’s roster of leading chronic diseases. That is not a coincidence I’m willing to ignore.

Not sure if you’re eating them? Try this test

I started questioning my own plate, so I came up with a simple gut check. Could you make it in your own kitchen?

Cheese curls. Could you make those at home? Bologna. What exactly is in it, and could you make it yourself? Chicken nuggets, Doritos, Pringles, turkey ham. If you can’t reasonably recreate a food in your kitchen with ingredients you recognize, that’s your answer. That’s ultra-processed.

I’m not being cute about it. That question cuts through the marketing faster than any label claim. If a food required a chemical plant to exist, it probably belongs in a different category than the beans and rice your grandmother cooked.

You don’t need a boutique budget to eat better

Here’s where I want to be careful, because “just eat healthy” advice too often ignores real budgets, real neighborhoods, and the food deserts a lot of us are actually navigating. Getting off ultra-processed foods does not require an expensive organic market. It requires a strategy.

Prioritize frozen over canned. Frozen vegetables and fruit are picked at peak ripeness, usually carry no added sugar or corn syrup, and cost less than out-of-season fresh produce.

Buy whole grains in bulk. Dried beans, lentils, oats, and brown rice run pennies per serving and skip the industrial processing entirely. Walk into an African or Asian market and you’ll see rice sold in 20 and 50-pound bags for a reason. You portion it yourself, store it in your pantry, and you’re set for a long time.

Batch-cook your proteins. Prepare a large quantity of plain chicken, eggs, or ground beef, portion it, and freeze it. That one habit replaces a whole shelf of microwave dinners and deli meats.

Small moves. Real money saved. Better food on the table.

The syrup you can’t even buy

Now let’s talk about high fructose corn syrup. The average person takes in about 12 teaspoons of it every single day, and it isn’t just soda. It’s in ketchup, salad dressing, crackers. Teenagers consume roughly 80% more than the national average, which pushes them past 21 teaspoons a day. Compare that to the American Heart Association and American Diabetes Association guidance of about 6 teaspoons of added sugar for women and 9 for men. We are not in the same ballpark. We’re not even in the same city.

So I asked an obvious question. If this stuff is fine, why can’t I buy a bag of it at the store and set it next to the sugar? The answer tells you everything. High fructose corn syrup is a sticky industrial liquid shipped in tanker trucks. It’s produced through complex enzymatic processing of cornstarch in chemical plants. It was custom-engineered for corporate manufacturers because it blends into liquids, preserves color, and stabilizes shelf life. There was never any retail demand for it. It was built for factories, not for families.

Then I asked why the exact amount never shows up on the label. Turns out the FDA lets companies group chemically similar sugars together and report “total sugars” and “added sugars” in grams, rather than breaking out how much comes from corn syrup versus cane sugar. Part of the reason is that disclosing the precise recipe would expose a brand’s formula to competitors. So their proprietary secrets stay protected, often to our detriment.

But you do have one tool. Federal rules require ingredients to be listed in descending order by weight. If high fructose corn syrup sits near the top of the list, that product is heavily saturated with it. Check your breads and buns, your condiments and sauces, your yogurts and cereals. That’s where it hides.

What it actually does inside you

This is not harmless sweetness. High fructose corn syrup delivers a large, unnatural dose of free fructose straight into your system, and fructose is a problem because only your liver can process it. Glucose, every cell can burn. Fructose, the liver handles alone. Overload it day after day and the liver starts converting the excess directly into fat. That’s non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, NAFLD.

It doesn’t stop there. The rapid breakdown of fructose in the liver spikes uric acid. High uric acid crystallizes in your joints like grains of rock salt and causes the inflammation known as gout. Ask anyone who’s had it, usually in the big toe, sometimes a knee or an elbow. According to the Mayo Clinic, the same condition is aggravated by high-purine organ meats, excess red meat, certain shellfish and fish, and alcohol, with beer as the worst offender. High fructose corn syrup keeps that company.

And maybe the sneakiest effect of all: research summarized by Britannica suggests high fructose corn syrup disrupts leptin, the hormone that signals your brain that you’re full. When that signal breaks, your appetite stays switched on. There’s no internal voice telling you that you’ve had enough. So you keep eating, and the system that sold you the food keeps selling.

Follow the money

None of this happened by accident, so let’s ask why. In the 1970s, two government moves reshaped the sweetener market. First, heavy corn subsidies created a massive, cheap surplus of domestic corn. Second, tariffs and import quotas on foreign cane sugar made real sugar artificially expensive here at home.

Cheap corn on one side, expensive sugar on the other. Food scientists saw the opening and perfected a way to turn that corn surplus into a liquid sweetener that mimicked sugar at a fraction of the cost. Soft drink makers switched over and saved billions. They did it quietly, without changing the marketing, and without giving consumers any real say. The American public got handed a dietary shift dictated by agricultural politics and corporate profit margins. That’s it. That’s the whole story.

The system rewards shelf life and repeat sales. Highly engineered foods are designed to be hard to stop eating. We deserve more transparency than that.

Awareness gives us back the choice

You don’t have to overhaul your whole life this week. You have to start asking why. Why is corn syrup in the crackers? Why is a food impossible to make at home? Why isn’t the amount on the label? Those questions put a little power back in your hands, and in a food environment like ours, that matters.

If you want a head start, I put together a free Food Truth Starter Guide. Plain English, no filler, no fluff. It walks you through reading labels, spotting hidden sugars and corn syrup, and making real-food swaps that fit a real budget.

Download the free Food Truth Starter Guide →

This is also the heart of the work I’ve been building toward for years. My book, Food: The Final Frontier — The Plain Truth About Food, Chronic Disease & Health in Black & Brown Communities, comes out September 2026. Same voice you trust here, now something you can hold in your hand and pass to your mother, your sister, your church group, your book club.

Ask the why questions. Share this with someone you love. Stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.

Make it a powerful day. Peace.

Sources & Further Reading

• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health — What Are Ultra-Processed Foods? (2025): publichealth.jhu.edu
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health — Ultraprocessed Foods Account for More than Half of Calories Consumed at Home (2024): publichealth.jhu.edu
• Mayo Clinic — Gout Diet: What’s Allowed, What’s Not: mayoclinic.org
• U.S. Food & Drug Administration — Added Sugars on the Nutrition Facts Label: fda.gov
• Encyclopaedia Britannica — High-Fructose Corn Syrup: britannica.com
• CDC — National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES): cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes

About Lynn

Lynn Peterson (“Lynn Pete”) is an instructor, writer, researcher, and health and nutrition blogger who describes herself as “just the messenger.” She hosts the Health News & Views: Food the Final Frontier podcast, dedicated to bringing clarity to the health disparities in Black and brown communities. She holds a B.A. in English/Communications and M.S. and D.Sc. degrees in Education, and is a Certified Post-Secondary Instructor and Certified Health Coach. Her book, Food: The Final Frontier — The Plain Truth About Food, Chronic Disease & Health in Black & Brown Communities, arrives September 2026.

Food: The Final Frontier.

The post HFCS, Ultra-Processed Foods, and Our Health appeared first on Health News & Views.

This article, about “artificial sweeteners” is intended for general educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. If you have concerns about diabetes, blood sugar, or your diet, please consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes.

Let me tell you about the day a peach let me down.

I bit into a fresh, ripe peach — the kind that should make you close your eyes and smile — and it barely registered. Not sweet enough. And I remember thinking, when did a peach stop being sweet? The peach hadn’t changed. I had. I’d been reaching for the little pink packet for longer than I care to admit, and somewhere along the way my standard for “sweet” had climbed so high that nature couldn’t keep up.

That’s where this starts. Not with a study — with a peach. But the science caught up to my kitchen table, so let’s talk about it.

No sugar, no calories, no guilt — or so we’re told

Artificial sweeteners came along promising the impossible: all the sweet, none of the consequences. Zero sugar. Zero calories. Zero guilt. I believed it. I thought I’d found the holy grail.

Here’s a number that stopped me cold. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, these are not “a little sweeter” than sugar — they are engineered sweet. Aspartame (the blue packet) and acesulfame potassium are about 200 times sweeter than table sugar. Saccharin (the pink packet) runs 200 to 700 times sweeter. Sucralose (the yellow packet) is around 600 times. Neotame lands somewhere between 7,000 and 13,000 times. And a newer one, advantame, is roughly 20,000 times sweeter than sugar.

Twenty thousand times. Sit with that. Manufacturers use only a tiny speck, sure — but it leaves me with a question I can’t shake: why does anything need to be 20,000 times sweeter than sugar? And what happens to us when our brains and taste buds get trained on a sweetness that nature never once offered?

What the research actually says (and doesn’t)

I first covered this four years ago, and I went back to see what had changed. Short version: the science is asking better questions now — beyond just calories.

On weight. In 2023, the World Health Organization reviewed the evidence and recommended against using non-sugar sweeteners as a long-term strategy for weight control. Reviewers found no lasting benefit in reducing body fat in adults or children. Now — that doesn’t mean a packet automatically makes you gain weight. It means swapping sugar for a zero-calorie sweetener doesn’t touch the cravings, habits, and patterns that got us here in the first place. I’m living proof. I changed the packet. I never changed my relationship with sweetness. And I never lost a pound — if anything, I ate more.

On your gut. In a 2022 randomized trial published in the journal Cell, researchers gave 120 healthy adults saccharin, sucralose, aspartame, or stevia. All four produced measurable changes in participants’ gut microbiomes. Saccharin and sucralose also worsened the blood-sugar response — in some people. Notice I said some. The effect depended on the person and the community of microbes already living in their gut. So no, I’m not telling you every sweetener wrecks everybody’s gut. I’m telling you these products may not be the biologically “inactive” ingredients we assumed they were.

On your heart. Large population studies have reported associations between frequent sweetener consumption and cardiovascular disease. But hear me clearly: association is not proof of cause. Someone reaching for diet products may already be managing diabetes, weight, or other risks. This is exactly the kind of place we have to be honest about both the concern and the uncertainty. No panic. No hype. Just the truth as it stands today.

The FDA still considers approved sweeteners safe within established limits. But “safe” answers one question — how much can you consume before it’s toxic? It does not answer the questions I actually care about: Will this help me lose weight? Will it restore my taste for real food? Will it move me toward lifelong health? Those are not the same question.

The real trap wasn’t the packet

Here’s what took me years to see. The trap wasn’t the pink packet. The trap was believing I could keep everything intensely sweet and somehow change the outcome. I wanted my cake and to eat it too — but I never stopped wanting the cake.

Some things are made from a plant. And some things are made in a plant. Get it? That little difference changed how I think about everything on my plate.

And this isn’t only an artificial-sweetener problem. It’s high-fructose corn syrup. It’s cane sugar poured into everything. Sometimes it’s just too much — too doggone sweet. We’ve been trained to expect a level of sweetness that real food was never built to match. Nature already gave us peaches, strawberries, blueberries, apples, sweet potatoes, carrots. Maybe the goal isn’t to find something sweeter than sugar. Maybe it’s to fall back in love with the sweetness that’s already here.

I’ll add one more thing, because it matters in the neighborhoods I care about most. “Just eat healthy” advice too often ignores real budgets, real food deserts, and the communities actually navigating them. Retraining your taste buds is one of the few tools that costs nothing and belongs to you. That’s why I keep talking about it.

So what do we do? (Read the label, question the marketing)

• Turn the package over. If a product’s biggest selling point is “no sugar, no calories, no carbs,” ask the next question: then what IS in it?
• Watch the “stevia” that isn’t really stevia. Many powder stevia products are mostly fillers — dextrose, maltodextrin, erythritol — with a little stevia along for the ride. That’s often what’s behind that bitter aftertaste. If you see those fillers on the label, leave it on the shelf. Personally, for hot and cold drinks, I stick with liquid stevia.
• Retrain your palate, slowly. Give real fruit a fair shot again. It may take time for a peach to taste like a peach — that’s the point.
• Ask the honest question before you reach for the packet: Am I reducing sugar, or am I just finding another way to feed my sweet tooth?
• Talk to your doctor before making changes, especially if you’re managing diabetes or heart concerns.

Four years ago, I thought artificial sweeteners were the answer. Today I see them differently. For me, they were never the solution — just another way to keep chasing sweetness.

When a perfectly ripe peach isn’t sweet enough anymore, maybe the problem isn’t the peach.

I’m just sayin’.

Ready to read your plate like a pro?

You don’t have to figure this out alone in the grocery aisle. I put together a free Food Truth Starter Guide — plain English, no filler, no fluff — to help you read labels, spot hidden sweeteners and sugars, and choose real food that fits real budgets.

Get the free Food Truth Starter Guide →

Read the label. Question the marketing. Make it a powerful day.

Sources & Further Reading

• World Health Organization — Use of Non-Sugar Sweeteners: WHO Guideline (2023): who.int · News release
• Suez J. et al. — “Personalized microbiome-driven effects of non-nutritive sweeteners on human glucose tolerance,” Cell (2022): cell.com · PubMed
• U.S. Food & Drug Administration — Aspartame and Other Sweeteners in Food: fda.gov
• Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health — Unpacking the WHO Guidelines on Non-Sugar Sweeteners: nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu

About Lynn

Lynn Peterson (“Lynn Pete”) is an instructor, writer, researcher, and health and nutrition blogger who describes herself as “just the messenger.” She hosts the Health News & Views: Food the Final Frontier podcast, dedicated to bringing clarity to the health disparities in Black and brown communities. She holds a B.A. in English/Communications and M.S. and D.Sc. degrees in Education, and is a Certified Post-Secondary Instructor and Certified Health Coach.

Food: The Final Frontier.

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Ultra-processed foods and chronic disease are now inseparably linked in the scientific literature — and understanding that connection may be the most important thing you can do for your long-term health.

Introduction: The Question Nobody Was Asking

For decades, the conversation around food and health focused on calories, fat grams, and portion sizes. We were told to eat less and move more. And yet, by every measurable metric, Americans got sicker.

Today, six in ten U.S. adults live with at least one chronic disease, and four in ten have two or more (CDC, 2023). Heart disease remains the leading cause of death. Type 2 diabetes affects more than 38 million Americans. Obesity rates have more than doubled since the 1980s.

So what changed? One answer that researchers are increasingly pointing to: the dramatic rise of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) — and what they are doing to our bodies over time.

This is not a fringe theory. It is the subject of peer-reviewed studies in journals like The BMJ, Cell Metabolism, and JAMA Internal Medicine. The evidence is building, and it is worth understanding.

What Are Ultra-Processed Foods?

The term “ultra-processed” was developed by Brazilian epidemiologist Carlos Monteiro and colleagues as part of the NOVA food classification system, which groups foods by the extent and purpose of their processing — not just their nutrient content.

Here is a simplified breakdown of the four NOVA categories:

Ultra-processed foods (Group 4) are not simply foods with added sugar or salt. They are industrial formulations — typically manufactured using ingredients and additives rarely found in home kitchens: hydrolyzed proteins, modified starches, emulsifiers, artificial flavors, synthetic dyes, and preservatives.

The goal of ultra-processing is not primarily nutrition. It is shelf stability, palatability, and profit.

How Much Ultra-Processed Food Are We Eating?

The answer is: a lot. More than most people realize.

According to a 2021 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, ultra-processed foods now account for approximately 57–60% of daily caloric intake for the average American adult — and as much as 67% of daily calories for American children and adolescents (Juul et al., 2021).

That means for many people, more than half of everything they eat every day falls into the ultra-processed category.

This is not an accident. It is the result of decades of deliberate food engineering, aggressive marketing, and a food environment shaped more by industry economics than by human health. (For a deeper look at how the food industry uses GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe — designations to introduce additives with minimal oversight, see our related article on [Processed Foods and GRAS Ingredients].)

The Research: What Ultra-Processed Foods Do to the Body

Metabolic Disruption and Weight Gain

In 2019, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published a landmark randomized controlled trial — the gold standard of clinical research — conducted by Dr. Kevin Hall and colleagues at the NIH Clinical Center. Participants were randomly assigned to either an ultra-processed diet or an unprocessed diet for two weeks, then switched to the other diet for two weeks. Both diets were matched for total calories, sugar, fat, fiber, and macronutrients offered.

The result: When participants were on the ultra-processed diet, they ate an average of 500 more calories per day and gained weight. On the unprocessed diet, they ate less and lost weight — without being told to restrict intake. The difference was driven not by willpower but by the food itself (Hall et al., 2019, Cell Metabolism).

This finding is critical. It suggests that ultra-processed foods may override the body’s natural satiety signals — its ability to know when it has had enough.

(For more on how dietary fats and food processing affect metabolism and weight, see our related article on [Dietary Fats and Cooking Oils].)

Cardiovascular Disease

A 2019 prospective cohort study following more than 105,000 French adults (the NutriNet-Santé study), published in The BMJ, found that a 10% increase in the proportion of ultra-processed foods in the diet was associated with a 12% increase in the risk of cardiovascular disease (Srour et al., 2019).

Cardiovascular disease kills approximately 695,000 Americans per year, making it the nation’s leading cause of death (CDC, 2023).

Type 2 Diabetes

A 2020 meta-analysis published in JAMA Internal Medicine analyzed data from more than 183,000 adults across multiple countries and found that higher ultra-processed food consumption was significantly associated with increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, independent of obesity status (Fiolet et al., 2018; Chen et al., 2020).

This is important because it suggests that the risk is not simply mediated by weight gain. Something in ultra-processed foods — potentially the emulsifiers, the disruption to the gut microbiome, the glycemic load, or the inflammatory compounds formed during high-heat industrial processing — appears to affect insulin sensitivity directly.

(Our article on [Sugar and High-Fructose Corn Syrup] covers the specific role of added sweeteners in insulin resistance and metabolic disease.)

Colorectal Cancer

A 2022 study published in The BMJ followed more than 197,000 participants in the United Kingdom and found that high ultra-processed food intake was associated with a 29% increased risk of colorectal cancer — specifically for men — and increased risk for a range of other cancers as well (Hang et al., 2022).

Depression and Mental Health

Emerging research is linking ultra-processed food consumption to mental health outcomes. A 2022 study in Nutritional Neuroscience found associations between high UPF intake and increased risk of depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline — a field of research now sometimes called nutritional psychiatry (Lane et al., 2022).

The gut-brain axis — the bidirectional communication network between your digestive system and your central nervous system — appears to be a key mechanism, with ultra-processed foods disrupting the gut microbiome in ways that affect neurotransmitter production and neuroinflammation.

Why Are Ultra-Processed Foods So Hard to Stop Eating?

This is not a matter of weak willpower. Food scientists are paid to engineer products that override satiety and maximize consumption — what industry insiders have called the “bliss point.”

Key mechanisms include:

• Hyperpalatability: Precise combinations of sugar, fat, and salt that stimulate the brain’s reward pathways more intensely than whole foods.
• Rapid digestion: Ultra-processed foods are typically pre-digested by industrial processing, leading to fast glucose spikes and crashes that drive hunger.
• Disrupted satiety hormones: Research suggests that emulsifiers and other additives may interfere with the secretion of leptin and GLP-1, the hormones that tell the brain the body is full.
• Addictive food design: A growing body of research supports the concept of food addiction as a real neurological phenomenon, particularly as it relates to ultra-processed foods (Schulte et al., 2015, PLOS ONE).

(For more on how food additives may be contributing to weight gain at a biological level, see our article on [Food Additives and Weight Gain].)

The GRAS Problem and Food Safety Gaps

One of the most underreported aspects of ultra-processed foods is the regulatory gap around the thousands of additives they contain.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows food manufacturers to self-certify that new additives are “Generally Recognized As Safe” (GRAS) — without mandatory pre-market FDA review. As of 2023, there are an estimated 10,000+ additives permitted in the U.S. food supply, many of which have never been independently reviewed for long-term safety, particularly their effects on the gut microbiome.

This regulatory framework was created in 1958, before the modern era of food science, microbiome research, or our current understanding of metabolic disease.

(For a detailed breakdown of the GRAS designation system, see our article on [Processed Foods and GRAS Ingredients].)

Practical Steps: Moving Away from Ultra-Processed Foods

Reducing ultra-processed food consumption does not require a perfect diet or a complete overhaul overnight. Research suggests that even modest reductions in UPF intake are associated with measurable health improvements.

Here are evidence-based starting points:

1. Read the Ingredient List — Not Just the Nutrition Label

If a product contains ingredients you would not find in a home kitchen — such as carrageenan, polysorbate 80, DATEM, or “artificial flavors” — it is likely ultra-processed. The length of the ingredient list is often a quick proxy: the longer the list, the more processed the product tends to be.

2. Cook More Whole Foods at Home

This does not mean gourmet cooking. It means building meals around recognizable ingredients: vegetables, legumes, whole grains, eggs, plain meats, fruit, nuts, and seeds. Batch cooking on weekends can make weeknight whole-food meals far more accessible.

3. Rethink Beverages

Soft drinks, flavored coffees, energy drinks, and many fruit juices are ultra-processed and represent a significant source of added sugar and artificial ingredients for many Americans. Water, unsweetened herbal teas, and plain coffee or tea are straightforward substitutions.

4. Crowd Out, Don’t Just Cut Out

Instead of focusing only on what to eliminate, focus on adding more whole foods to each meal. Over time, nutrient-dense foods tend to naturally crowd out ultra-processed options by improving satiety.

5. Be Patient With Your Palate

Research shows that taste preferences change with dietary habits. People who reduce ultra-processed foods over several weeks often report that whole foods taste significantly better and that previously appealing processed foods taste overly sweet, salty, or artificial.

Connecting the Dots: Chronic Disease as a System

This article is part of a broader conversation we’ve been having on this blog about the relationship between what we eat and the diseases that are overwhelming our healthcare system.

Ultra-processed foods are one major piece — but they don’t exist in isolation. They connect to:

• Liver disease: Ultra-processed foods, particularly those high in fructose, are a major driver of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD/MASLD). (See our article on [NAFLD and Liver Disease].)
• Cardiovascular disease: The fats, sodium, and inflammatory compounds in UPFs compound cardiovascular risk. (See our article on [The Human Body: Health Facts You Should Know].)
• Metabolic syndrome: The combination of obesity, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, and dyslipidemia — all strongly associated with UPF consumption — is now present in an estimated one in three American adults (CDC, 2023).

The body is a system. What we eat affects everything: our liver, our heart, our brain, our hormones, and our microbiome. That is the core message of this blog, and it is a message the science increasingly supports.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: Are all processed foods bad for you? A: No. The NOVA classification distinguishes between processing levels. Minimally processed foods like plain yogurt, frozen vegetables, canned beans, and oats are nutritious and practical. The concern is specifically with ultra-processed foods (NOVA Group 4), which contain industrial additives and have been significantly altered from their original form.

Q: Can I eat ultra-processed foods occasionally? A: The research looks at patterns of consumption over time, not individual meals. An occasional ultra-processed food in an otherwise whole-food diet is unlikely to cause measurable harm. The issue is when UPFs make up the majority of daily intake — which is currently the norm in the United States.

Q: Are “healthy” ultra-processed foods like protein bars and low-calorie snacks okay? A: Many products marketed as healthy — protein bars, low-calorie snacks, plant-based meat alternatives — are still ultra-processed by the NOVA definition. Their health impact depends on the specific ingredients and how they fit into an overall dietary pattern. Reading ingredient lists is more informative than front-of-package health claims.

Q: What is the single most impactful dietary change I can make? A: Research consistently points to cooking more meals from whole, recognizable ingredients as the highest-impact dietary change for long-term health. This reduces ultra-processed food exposure across all meals simultaneously.

Q: Where can I learn more? A: The NOVA classification system and related research are available through the University of São Paulo’s research group. The NIH ultra-processed food trial by Hall et al. (2019) is freely available through PubMed. Consult your physician or a registered dietitian for personalized guidance.

References and Sources

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2023). Chronic Diseases in America. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease
• Hall, K.D., et al. (2019). Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake. Cell Metabolism, 30(1), 67–77.e3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008
• Srour, B., et al. (2019). Ultra-processed food intake and risk of cardiovascular disease: prospective cohort study. BMJ, 365, l1451. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l1451
• Hang, D., et al. (2022). Ultra-processed food consumption and risk of colorectal cancer. BMJ, 378, e068921.
• Juul, F., et al. (2021). Ultra-processed food consumption among US adults from 2001 to 2018. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 115(1), 211–221.
• Lane, M.M., et al. (2022). Ultra-processed food consumption and mental health: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Nutritional Neuroscience, 25(11), 2275–2285.
• Monteiro, C.A., et al. (2019). Ultra-processed foods: What they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutrition, 22(5), 936–941.
• Schulte, E.M., et al. (2015). Which Foods May Be Addictive? The Roles of Processing, Fat Content, and Glycemic Load. PLOS ONE, 10(2), e0117959.
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). (2023). Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS). Retrieved from https://www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-packaging/generally-recognized-safe-gras
• Are Carbs Bad for You? The Carb Killer Mystery Explained

© 2026 Health News & Views for Truth Seekers | healthnewsviews.info Content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.

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Artificial food dyes are everywhere—from candy to cereal—but what are they really doing to our bodies?

Oh, I like the red one. No, give me the green one — I’ll have the pink one, and I’ll have the blue one. They are all so beautifully decorated, and the children will love these!

Colored candy, cereal, cupcakes, and water ice (a Philly thing) lure us in with child-like anticipation. As humans, we are drawn to color. The more brilliant, the more irresistible. Color affects our mood and motivation, our sense of warmth or energy, even our appetite. Blues feel calming. Reds and oranges feel exciting. Green evokes nature and health. This isn’t just poetry — it’s psychology, and the food industry has known it and used it for decades.

But my question has always been: What is the health impact on the human body? How much testing was done to determine the long-term effects of dyes that are constantly ingested — especially by children, who are the biggest consumers? Are we poisoning ourselves? And what are the alternatives?

Food Coloring or Food Poison?

When I first wrote this piece in 2019, these were questions many parents and researchers were raising but regulatory agencies were largely dismissing. A lot has changed since then.

According to Healthline, consumption of artificial food dyes increased by 500% over the 50 years leading up to this decade, with children as the primary consumers. Food dyes are chemical substances made to enhance the appearance of food by giving it artificial color — and today they are made from petroleum.

The first artificial food colorings were developed in 1856 from coal tar. Hundreds have been created over the decades. Most have since been found to be toxic and removed from use. The purple dye once used by the USDA to stamp meat? Poisonous — and eventually banned. What remains is a small handful of synthetic dyes still widely used in our food, our beverages, our cereals, our medications — and even our children’s toothpaste.

What the Regulatory Agencies Said — and What’s Changed

For years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) maintained that approved dyes did not pose significant health risks, based on animal toxicity studies conducted at the time of approval. That position is now shifting in significant ways.

In January 2025, the FDA banned Red Dye No. 3 (Erythrosine) from food and ingested drugs due to its link to thyroid tumors in laboratory studies — a finding that had been documented since the 1980s.

Then, in April 2025, the FDA announced a sweeping plan to phase out all petroleum-based synthetic dyes from the U.S. food supply. According to the FDA announcement, the plan includes:

• Establishing a national timeline for the food industry to transition to natural color alternatives
• Revoking authorization for Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B
• Working with the food industry to eliminate six remaining synthetic dyes — Green No. 3, Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6, Blue No. 1, and Blue No. 2 — from the food supply
• Authorizing new natural color additives as replacements
• Partnering with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to research how food additives impact children’s health and development

For those of us who have been raising these concerns for years: the science is catching up with the conversation.

The Dyes Still in Use — And Their Known Concerns

The following information draws from multiple sources, including the original infographic from Special-Education-Degree.net, Healthline’s food dye review (updated January 2026), and peer-reviewed studies. These are the synthetic dyes currently or recently approved for use in U.S. food:

Red No. 3 (Erythrosine) — Commonly found in baked goods, candy, sausage, and maraschino cherries. Linked to thyroid tumors in animal studies. The FDA issued a partial ban in 1990 and a full ban in January 2025.

Red No. 40 (Allura Red) — The most widely used food dye in the U.S., present in roughly 14% of all products sold by top manufacturers as of a 2025 study. Found in sports drinks, candy, cereal, condiments, and cosmetics. Research has found a suspected link to immune system effects and hyperactivity in some children.

Yellow No. 5 (Tartrazine) — Found in candy, soft drinks, chips, cereals, and baked goods. May cause allergy-like reactions and mild to severe hypersensitivity in some individuals, particularly those with aspirin sensitivity.

Yellow No. 6 (Sunset Yellow) — Found in baked goods, sausage, cereal, sauces, and cosmetics. Animal studies have found a link to adrenal gland tumors. May contribute to hyperactivity in some children.

Blue No. 1 (Brilliant Blue) — Found in baked goods, beverages, candy, cereal, ice cream, and packaged soups. Associated with kidney tumors in mice; may trigger allergic reactions in individuals with pre-existing asthma. A 2022 peer-reviewed study found an association with ADHD symptoms in children.

Blue No. 2 (Indigo Carmine) — Found in beverages, candy, dog food, cereal, and ice cream. Animal studies have observed a significant occurrence of brain gliomas in male rats.

Green No. 3 (Fast Green) — Found in beverages, candy, ice cream, and cosmetics. Approved by the FDA but prohibited in the EU. Animal studies found significant increases in bladder tumors in male rats.

Citrus Red No. 2 — Found in the skin of Florida oranges (to enhance color). Classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). FDA revocation of its authorization is in progress.

Please note: The presence of a dye on this list does not mean every person consuming it will experience harm. Individual sensitivity varies significantly, and the science in this area is evolving. If you have health concerns, consult your physician before making dietary changes.

Dr. Rebecca Bevans: The Voice That Got Ahead of the Science

When I first included Dr. Rebecca Bevans in this article in 2019, she was a relatively under-the-radar researcher whose TEDx talk had been gaining quiet traction. Since then, her work has reached a global audience.

Dr. Bevans, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Western Nevada College. She holds a doctorate in Cognitive Neuroscience and a master’s degree in Human Development from the University of Nevada, Reno. She is also the president of Brain Matterz, a Nevada nonprofit focused on brain disorder research and education.

Her TEDxCarsonCity talk, “The Effects of Artificial Food Dyes”, now has nearly 500,000 YouTube views, and her story has been featured in Forbes, KQED, and a 2025 documentary, To Dye For, available on Prime Video, Apple TV, Vimeo, and Fandango. In 2025, she co-authored a book — Everything You Need to Know About Synthetic Food Dyes — synthesizing more than 170 scientific studies on the topic.

Her initial research, and what made the TEDx talk so compelling, was intensely personal. Her son Alex was seven years old when he looked at her and asked for a knife — saying he didn’t want to live like that anymore. The family doctor had no answers. Dr. Bevans, armed with her background in cognitive neuroscience, turned to the research — and eventually traced the source: synthetic food dyes.

In her talk, she describes the behavioral patterns she documented in her son for each dye color:

• Red — Hyperactivity, migraines, impulsiveness, “brain buzzing.” Similar to ADHD symptoms. Effects last 1–2 days.
• Green — Mania, hyperactivity, a feeling of euphoria. Similar to bipolar symptoms. Effects last approximately 12 hours.
• Yellow — Defiant behavior, violent outbursts, aggression, anxiety, suicidal ideation. Similar to Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder. Effects can last up to five days.
• Blue — Irritability, moodiness, fatigue. Effects last approximately 24 hours.

Dr. Bevans is careful to note that not all children respond to dyes in the same way — and the peer-reviewed research supports this nuance. A 2022 review published in Environmental Health found that food dyes may be associated with changes to attention and activity in children, and a separate 2022 review found a specific association between Blue No. 1 and Blue No. 2 and ADHD symptoms. The American Academy of Pediatrics stated in a 2018 policy statement that artificial food colors “may be associated with exacerbation of ADHD symptoms.”

None of this is settled science. But it is accumulating science — and the FDA’s 2025 phase-out announcement suggests that the regulatory tide is turning.

So What Do We Do Now?

Unless a product’s label clearly states that its colors are derived from plant-based sources, it is reasonable to assume they are artificial. And it’s worth noting: the same applies to many medications. An estimated 80–90% of medicines contain food dyes.

The most practical steps remain the same ones I suggested in 2019:

• Read labels. If you see a color listed by number (Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1), it is artificial and petroleum-based.
• Choose whole foods. The biggest sources of artificial dyes are ultra-processed foods that carry other health concerns anyway. Eliminating them addresses multiple problems at once.
• Look for natural alternatives. Beets and raspberries make beautiful pink smoothies. Turmeric gives a golden yellow. Companies can and do make petroleum-free color options — the demand is growing.
• Check your medications. If your child is taking a prescription, ask your pharmacist whether the formulation contains synthetic dyes and whether a dye-free version is available.
• Talk to your doctor. If your child shows signs of hyperactivity, behavioral changes, or sensitivity reactions, bring it up with their pediatrician. The conversation around food dyes and children’s neurobehavioral health is now mainstream enough to warrant a direct discussion.

The choice is ultimately ours. Reds, greens, yellows, oranges, purples, blues — those are the colors of the rainbow. Nature gave us an extraordinary array of whole foods already bursting with them. Let’s begin to make the choices we know are better for our health and our families.

I’m just sayin’.

Watch, Read & Learn

Dr. Rebecca Bevans — TEDxCarsonCity: The Effects of Artificial Food Dyes (YouTube)

Documentary: To Dye For — Available on Prime Video, Apple TV, Vimeo, and Fandango

Book: Everything You Need to Know About Synthetic Food Dyes — Dr. Rebecca Bevans & Dr. Lorne Hofseth (2025)

Sources & Further Reading

• FDA — HHS Announcement: Phase-Out of Petroleum-Based Synthetic Dyes (April 2025): fda.gov
• FDA — Red No. 3 Ban (January 2025): fda.gov
• Healthline — Food Dyes: Harmless or Harmful? (Updated January 2026): healthline.com
• Special-Education-Degree.net — “Colors to Die For: The Dangerous Impact of Food Coloring” (Infographic): special-education-degree.net
• Western Nevada College — Dr. Bevans Feature (2025): wnc.edu
• KQED — “What You Need to Know About the Food Dye in Holiday Treats”: kqed.org
• WebMD — ADHD and Food Additives: webmd.com

This article is intended for general educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. If you have specific concerns about food sensitivities, allergies, or your child’s behavior, please consult a qualified healthcare professional.

The post Color Struck! Artificial Food Dyes: What’s Really Happening Behind the Colors We Eat appeared first on Health News & Views.

Are carbs bad for you, or is the real problem something we’ve been overlooking all along?

What a tragedy. Who could have done such a thing? Are there any suspects? He didn’t have to go out like that! The [family] is going to be fried! Just another senseless crime perpetrated on our carbohydrate friends — and I heard some of them got (s)mashed when they saw the pictures

What do you mean, no carbs? Low carbs? I like potatoes, bread, rice, and pasta!

As the trend toward low- and no-carb eating has continued to grow, it’s worth taking a step back and understanding what carbohydrates actually do — and what they don’t — before declaring them public enemy number one. Like most things in nutrition, the truth is more nuanced than the headlines suggest.

Where I’m Coming From

Like many Americans, I grew up in a family that wanted to make sure we had enough to eat. A square meal was a starch, a vegetable, and a meat. A big pot of spaghetti appeared at least once a week — and we are not Italian. Nor are we Irish or Asian, but potatoes and rice were the staples that made the meal. The point being: the American dinner table has always been multicultural, and carbohydrates have always had a seat at it.

Meals were cooked at home. Fast food was last night’s leftovers. Nobody talked about “macros.” Having two starches at the same meal might have earned you a raised eyebrow and a gentle warning about shopping in the “chubby” section — but carbohydrates themselves were never the villain.

So what changed? Is the no-carb movement a fad, a trend, or a genuine lifestyle shift? Let’s bring in the suspects.

The Lineup: Three Popular Approaches to Low-Carb Eating

Atkins

The Atkins diet was developed by physician Dr. Robert C. Atkins, who popularized it in a bestselling 1972 book. At the time, it was controversial — even dismissed by parts of the health community — largely because of its emphasis on higher saturated fat and protein intake.

Since then, research has shown a more balanced picture. Studies have found that low-carbohydrate diets like Atkins may support weight loss and show improvements in blood sugar, HDL (“good”) cholesterol, and triglycerides in some individuals, according to a review published by Healthline. Notably, these diets do not appear, on average, to raise LDL (“bad”) cholesterol — though individual responses vary and should be monitored with your doctor’s guidance.

Atkins is structured in four phases, gradually reintroducing carbohydrates:

• Phase 1 (Induction): Fewer than 20 grams of carbs per day for two weeks, with a focus on leafy greens, high-protein, and high-fat foods.
• Phase 2 (Balancing): Slowly adding nuts, low-carb vegetables, and small amounts of fruit.
• Phase 3 (Fine-Tuning): Adding more carbs as you approach your goal weight.
• Phase 4 (Maintenance): Eating as many healthy carbs as your body can tolerate while maintaining your weight.

Paleo

The Paleo diet takes its inspiration from the eating patterns of our Paleolithic ancestors — hunter-gatherers who lived roughly 10,000 years or more ago. The idea, according to Mayo Clinic, is that our bodies may be better adapted to foods we could hunt or gather than to those introduced with agriculture.

The Paleo approach emphasizes lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, while eliminating grains, legumes, dairy, refined sugar, and most processed foods. White potatoes are also typically excluded, though some versions allow sweet potatoes.

Mayo Clinic notes that the Paleo diet shares many features with other recognized healthy eating patterns — particularly its emphasis on whole foods and elimination of processed items. However, researchers point out that removing whole grains, legumes, and dairy can mean missing out on fiber, protein, calcium, and other key nutrients. Long-term studies on Paleo are still limited, and the diet can also be more expensive and less accessible than more varied approaches.

If Paleo interests you, it’s worth discussing with your healthcare provider whether it suits your specific health profile and lifestyle.

Keto (Ketogenic)

Keto is currently one of the most talked-about dietary approaches, and for good reason — many people have experienced meaningful weight loss following it, myself included.

The ketogenic diet typically limits carbohydrates to 50 grams or less per day (roughly 5% of total calories), with fat making up 60–80% of the diet and protein accounting for 15–35%. This low level of carbohydrate intake pushes the body into ketosis — a metabolic state in which fat, rather than glucose, becomes the primary fuel source.

It works. For many people, the initial results are significant. But here’s what I found personally, and what registered dietitians have noted: carbohydrates store water in the body, which means early weight loss on keto is largely water weight. And once the desired goal is reached, the diet can be difficult to sustain. The limited variety — and the fairly strict elimination of fruit, starchy vegetables, and legumes — can lead to boredom and nutritional gaps over time.

Edwina Clark, R.D., has pointed to deprivation, flavor fatigue, potential nutritional deficiencies, and a “boomerang effect” as real concerns with long-term keto. For me personally, it just wasn’t sustainable. I love bananas, apples, yams, potatoes, butternut squash — and lately chickpeas as a tuna substitute. Yum.

The Real Suspects: A Closer Look at Carbohydrates

Here’s the thing about carbohydrates — they are not all the same, and the research makes clear that the type and source matter enormously. Rather than eliminating the entire category, it helps to understand the difference.

Simple carbohydrates — the ones most likely to cause problems — are found in refined sugars and highly processed foods. These digest quickly, spike blood sugar rapidly, and offer little nutritional value. Think potato chips, sugar cookies, soda, artificial juice drinks, muffins, bagels, pretzels, cake, and pies. These were, admittedly, some of my personal favorites — and they remain the most legitimate “suspects” in the carb crime scene.

Complex carbohydrates — from whole, unprocessed sources — are a different story. Foods like quinoa, oats, barley, lentils, beans, beets, yams, pumpkin, and whole grain bread contain fiber that slows digestion, allowing for more gradual absorption and better nutrient uptake. They don’t race through the bloodstream the way candy or soda does.

Lower-carb vegetables — including broccoli, asparagus, spinach, kale, cauliflower, zucchini, peppers, cucumbers, mushrooms, and salad greens — contain carbohydrates as well, but at very low levels and with significant fiber and micronutrient value.

The bottom line: a can of potato chips loaded with trans fat, monosodium glutamate, maltodextrin, and cottonseed oil simply cannot provide what the body needs. Most fruits and vegetables can.

So What Now?

Many Americans are scaling back from several decades of the low-fat, high-carbohydrate approach that dominated nutrition guidance from the 1980s onward. We’re reading labels more carefully, asking harder questions, and recognizing that proteins, fats, and carbohydrates all have essential roles to play.

If you’re considering a significant dietary shift, it’s worth keeping a few things in mind:

• The Atkins, Paleo, and Keto approaches all rely heavily on meat. If you’re reducing or eliminating meat, these plans may need significant modification to work for you.
• Sustainability matters. A plan that produces short-term results but isn’t maintainable long-term may not serve you well overall.
• Your personal health history, medications, and goals matter enormously. What works well for one person may not be appropriate for another.

Please consult your physician or a registered dietitian before making significant dietary changes, particularly if you have existing health conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or kidney concerns.

I’m just sayin’.

What’s your opinion on this topic? Please leave a comment below.

Sources & Further Reading

• Mayo Clinic — The Paleo Diet: mayoclinic.org
• USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2020–2025): dietaryguidelines.gov
• Healthline — Low-Carb Diets and Cholesterol: healthline.com
• Medical News Today — Carbohydrates: Why we need them: medicalnewstoday.com
• NutritionFacts.org — Carbohydrate & Whole Food Resources: nutritionfacts.org
• Artificial Food Dyes: What’s Really Happening Behind the Colors We Eat

Note: The information in this article is intended for general educational purposes only and does not constitute medical or dietary advice. Before making significant changes to your diet, please consult a qualified healthcare professional or registered dietitian who can evaluate your individual health needs.

Food: The Final Frontier.

The post Are Carbs Bad for You? The Carb Killer Mystery Explained appeared first on Health News & Views.

The connection between food additives and weight gain may help explain why so many people struggle to lose weight despite eating what seems like the same diet.

Sound Familiar?

“How much do I weigh? That’s impossible — I don’t eat that much.”

“I eat the same food I always have. What happened?”

“I used to be able to just cut back for a week and drop five pounds. Now nothing works.”

If any of that resonates, you are not alone — and more importantly, you are not entirely to blame. What changed is not just your habits. What changed is the food.

We Are Busier, Yes. But That’s Not the Whole Story.

As Americans, we do eat more than previous generations. Portion sizes have grown. Food is available everywhere, around the clock, at almost any price point. We celebrate, grieve, socialize, and decompress around food. Birthdays, graduations, game days, anniversaries, funerals — there is always a reason, and there is always a table.

And yes, we are busier. New jobs, spouses, children, aging parents — life stacks up, and meal planning is often the first casualty.

But here is what the “eat less, move more” conversation consistently leaves out: the food most of us are eating today is not the same food our parents and grandparents ate. It looks similar. It is packaged similarly. But what is inside has changed — quietly, incrementally, and with significant consequences for appetite, metabolism, and weight.

What the Food Industry Added (Without Much Fanfare)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has, since the 1970s, permitted food producers to use additives to enhance flavor, extend shelf life, and improve the visual appearance of food. The regulatory classification — GRAS, or “Generally Recognized as Safe” — allows many of these ingredients to enter the food supply with limited independent safety review. (For a deeper look at how GRAS works, see our companion article: The Truth About Processed Foods: Additives, GRAS Ingredients, and What They’re Doing to Your Health.)

As consumption of packaged and processed food increased, so did the use of these additives. The core commercial logic is straightforward: if the food tastes better, consumers buy more and eat more. What was not advertised is what some of these additives do to hunger signals, blood sugar, and the body’s ability to recognize fullness.

How Food Additives Undermine Your Body’s Own Appetite Controls

Your body has a sophisticated system for regulating hunger and satiety. Several common food additives and processing methods are now understood to interfere with that system:

• High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS): Unlike glucose, fructose does not trigger an adequate insulin or leptin response — two hormones critical to signaling fullness to the brain. Research published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (Stanhope et al., 2009, updated in subsequent reviews) found that high fructose consumption was associated with increased appetite and visceral fat accumulation compared to equivalent glucose intake.
• Artificial Sweeteners (aspartame, sucralose, saccharin): Counter-intuitively, research suggests that artificial sweeteners may increase cravings for sweet foods by triggering an insulin response without delivering actual calories — leaving the appetite system unsatisfied. A large-scale review in CMAJ (2017) found that regular consumption of non-nutritive sweeteners was associated with increased BMI and cardiometabolic risk over time.
• Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) and Related Flavor Enhancers (autolyzed yeast extract, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, inosinate, guanylate): These compounds stimulate the palate in ways that can override natural satiety signals and encourage continued eating. Some animal studies have linked chronic MSG exposure to leptin resistance, though human data remains an active area of research.
• Emulsifiers (carboxymethylcellulose, polysorbate 80): Emerging research, including studies published in Nature (Chassaing et al., 2015), suggests that certain emulsifiers may disrupt the gut microbiome and intestinal lining, potentially affecting metabolic function and inflammatory responses linked to obesity.
• Refined Carbohydrates and Added Sugars: Stripped of fiber and processed for rapid digestion, these cause rapid blood sugar spikes followed by crashes that reliably trigger renewed hunger — often within an hour or two of eating.

This is not a character flaw. This is biochemistry.

What the Data Shows: Where We Are Now

The population-level results of decades of processed food consumption are measurable:

• More than 40% of American adults are now classified as obese (CDC, 2023) — up from 34.9% in 2011–2012 and continuing to rise
• 38% of American adults have pre-diabetes or Type 2 Diabetes (CDC, 2024), with rates increasing among younger adults and adolescents
• The CDC estimates that 90% of Americans exceed recommended daily sodium intake, largely from processed and packaged foods
• Ultra-processed foods now account for approximately 57% of total caloric intake among American adults (Martínez Steele et al., BMJ Open, 2020)

These are not individual failures. They are the predictable outcome of a food environment engineered to maximize consumption.

Then vs. Now: What Changed in the Ingredient List

Your grandmother seasoned food with ingredients she could grow, buy whole, or name from memory:

Salt, pepper, vinegar, garlic, dill, cloves, nutmeg, lemon, cinnamon, bay leaf, onion, coriander, peppers.

Compare that to a modern ingredient panel for a comparable packaged product. The difference is not just complexity — it is the biological effect of those added compounds on your hunger, your hormones, and your waistline.

How Food Additives Affect Weight Gain

What You Can Do Right Now

You do not need to overhaul everything overnight. Start here:

1. Read the ingredient list — not just the nutrition label. Calories tell part of the story. Ingredients tell the rest.
2. If you can’t pronounce it or wouldn’t find it in a kitchen, research it before making it a daily habit.
3. Look at your cart. If it contains more boxes, bags, and bottles than whole foods, that ratio is worth shifting — even incrementally.
4. Replace one processed item per week with a whole-food equivalent. Progress over perfection.
5. Be skeptical of “diet,” “sugar-free,” and “low-fat” labels — these often substitute one problematic ingredient for another.
6. Talk to your doctor about your metabolic markers — fasting glucose, triglycerides, and liver enzymes can reveal the impact of diet on your health before symptoms appear.

The food industry will not change until consumers demand it — with their questions, their purchasing choices, and their voices. You are not powerless here.

It’s not entirely your fault. But now you have the memo.

About the Author

Lynn Peterson, B.A. (English/Communications), M.S. & D.Sc. (Education), is a Certified Post-Secondary Instructor and Certified Health Coach, writer, and health advocate.

Please note: Lynn is a Certified Health Coach, not a licensed physician. This content reflects her research and educational background and is not a substitute for advice from a qualified healthcare provider.

Her mission: “We are developing and dying from preventable, chronic diseases.” Her goal is to demystify medicine, illuminate the diet–disease connection, and help people make informed choices about what they eat. Food: The Final Frontier.

References & Further Reading

1. CDC National Center for Health Statistics. (2023). Obesity and Overweight. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm
2. CDC. (2024). National Diabetes Statistics Report. https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data/statistics-report/index.html
3. Stanhope, K.L., et al. (2009). Consuming fructose-sweetened beverages increases visceral adiposity. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 119(5), 1322–1334. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI37385
4. Azad, M.B., et al. (2017). Nonnutritive sweeteners and cardiometabolic health. CMAJ, 189(28), E929–E939. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.161390
5. Chassaing, B., et al. (2015). Dietary emulsifiers impact the gut microbiota. Nature, 519, 92–96. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14232
6. Martínez Steele, E., et al. (2020). Ultra-processed foods and added sugars in the US diet. BMJ Open. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/3/e009892
7. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Food Additives & Ingredients. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-ingredients-packaging
8. Healthline. (2023). 12 Common Food Additives — Should You Avoid Them? https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/common-food-additives

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER

This article is for general informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice and should not replace consultation with a licensed physician or qualified healthcare provider. The author is a Certified Health Coach, not a licensed medical doctor. Always consult your doctor before making changes to your diet, lifestyle, or weight management plan.

The post Why Food Additives and Weight Gain Are Linked (And What You Can Do) appeared first on Health News & Views.

A quick disclosure before we start: I’m a certified health coach and health educator — not a physician or a registered dietitian. Everything below is pulled from named, cited research and government guidance, not my personal ranking of what’s healthy. Treat it as homework to bring to your own doctor or dietitian, not a prescription. That’s not boilerplate to me — it’s the whole “just the messenger” thing.

You remember the blue can of grease by the stove. The lard that made the flakiest biscuits. Butter cascading down a mountain of mashed potatoes. Then, seemingly overnight, it was all declared a crime scene, and corn oil, margarine, and “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” moved in. Decades later, we’re still sorting out what that oil change actually cost us — and what to put in the pan tonight. Let’s start with tonight.

Healthy cooking oils at a glance

The short answer, if you’re standing in the kitchen right now: reach for extra-virgin olive oil most days, keep a bottle of refined avocado oil for high heat, save flaxseed or walnut oil for dressings, and treat coconut oil, butter, ghee, and lard as flavor players in limited amounts rather than everyday defaults — for reasons that are genuinely debated, not because anyone’s hiding something from you. Let’s get into it.

So what about butter, lard, ghee, and coconut oil?

This is the one place I want to show you both sides plainly, because they don’t agree, and pretending they do would be dishonest.

What mainstream cardiology says. The American Heart Association recommends cooking with nontropical liquid oils — olive, canola, corn, peanut, safflower, soybean, sunflower — instead of butter, lard, shortening, and tropical oils like palm and coconut, and it wants saturated fat capped at under 4 grams per tablespoon [1]. Cleveland Clinic’s Julia Zumpano, RD, LD, puts it plainly: virgin coconut oil runs about 92% saturated fat — more than butter — and she recommends using it in moderation rather than as a daily cooking oil [7]. This is the position most cardiologists and the AHA’s 2021 dietary fat guidance still hold [6].

What the traditional-foods camp argues. A 2010 meta-analysis of 21 prospective cohort studies by Siri-Tarino and colleagues, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found no statistically significant association between saturated fat intake alone and cardiovascular disease risk [2] — a finding that reignited this whole debate. Dr. Andrew Weil has argued lard, in moderation, is largely monounsaturated fat and not the villain it was made out to be [8]. The traditional-foods argument also points to LDL particle size: large, buoyant LDL particles are less strongly linked to arterial plaque than the small, dense particles that refined carbohydrates are now understood to drive — a distinction the original low-fat guidance didn’t make [3].

Where that leaves you. Both things can be true at once: saturated fat’s relationship to heart disease is more nuanced than “clogs your arteries,” and the AHA, Cleveland Clinic, and most practicing cardiologists still recommend limiting it and reaching for unsaturated oils as your everyday default. That second part is well-established guidance, not a fringe opinion — the particle-size nuance is accumulating science, not settled science that overturns it. If you eat butter or lard, you’re not committing a crime. If you’re cooking with them every night in place of olive or avocado oil, that’s the part worth a conversation with your own doctor, especially if you have existing cardiovascular risk.

Follow the money. One more fact worth having before you decide how much weight to put on “AHA-approved”: food companies pay the American Heart Association an annual licensing fee — reported at $3,000 to $6,000 per product, scaled to the company’s revenue — for the right to put its Heart-Check mark on a package, and that payment isn’t disclosed to you as the shopper [13]. It’s led to a string of class-action lawsuits over undisclosed paid endorsement, including one challenging Heart-Check-labeled red meat products even though AHA’s own general guidance urges limiting red meat [13]. None of that makes the underlying science wrong on its own. But “heart healthy” on a box is a paid credential, not a neutral verdict, and you’re allowed to weigh it accordingly.

Are seed oils secretly the enemy? A “guilty by association” case

Soybean, corn, cottonseed, and generic “vegetable oil” have been getting a lot of side-eye lately, and some of it is deserved — but let’s separate what’s proven from what’s still theory, because right now these get lumped together and they shouldn’t be.

Case for the prosecution: the modern diet runs an omega-6-to-omega-3 ratio of roughly 15:1 to 20:1, well above the 4:1 or lower ratio associated with better outcomes in one widely cited review [4]. Polyunsaturated oils also have lower smoke points and oxidize more readily under high heat, especially when reused.

Case for the defense: the AHA’s 2024 advisory states there’s no reason to avoid seed oils and several reasons to eat them, pointing to human outcome data rather than lab mechanisms [9]. Cleveland Clinic’s own review of the “seed oils are toxic” claim concludes the oils themselves aren’t the problem — their prevalence in ultra-processed food, and how many times they get reheated, is [10].

The verdict, honestly: these are four different claims wearing the same trench coat, and they don’t have the same evidence behind them.

1. Industrial trans fat is harmful — settled.
2. Repeatedly heating and reusing oil is undesirable — settled.
3. Ultra-processed food is associated with poor health outcomes — well-established.
4. All seed oils are inherently inflammatory or harmful in normal cooking amounts — contested, mechanistic evidence only, not confirmed in human outcomes.

It’s not the oil — it’s what we do to it, and how much of it arrives already baked into a bag of something else. Cold-pressed, high-oleic, and heavily refined versions of the same oil also behave differently, so “seed oil” as one uniform villain doesn’t hold up the way a detective-show ending wants it to.

Where trans fats still hide

Trans-fat warning: avoid anything listing “partially hydrogenated oil.” The FDA completed a phaseout of partially hydrogenated oils from the U.S. food supply by 2020, and the WHO has pushed the same globally [5][11] — so this is largely a solved problem in U.S.-manufactured food today. It can still turn up in older stock or some imported products, so it’s worth a label check, but it’s no longer the main event for anyone shopping in a U.S. grocery store in 2026.

Cooking-method cheat sheet

• Baking: canola or a neutral refined oil; butter or ghee for flavor in moderation.
• Oven roasting: avocado oil or olive oil, depending on temperature.
• Stir-frying / searing: refined avocado oil — highest smoke point of the group.
• Sautéing: extra-virgin olive oil at low-to-medium heat.
• Dressings and marinades (no heat): extra-virgin olive, flaxseed, or walnut oil.
• “Light” olive oil refers to flavor and color, not fewer calories or less fat — it’s simply more refined.
• When oil starts smoking, it’s breaking down; toss it and start over rather than pushing through.
• Don’t reuse deep-frying oil repeatedly — each use adds oxidation.
• Rancid oil smells faintly like crayons or paint; if it smells “off,” it is.
• Store oil in a cool, dark place, tightly capped, and buy a size you’ll finish in a few months rather than a jug that sits half-used for a year.

Why cooking-oil advice got so confusing in the first place

Quick history, promise. In 1955, President Eisenhower suffered a very public heart attack. He’d also been a four-pack-a-day cigarette smoker for decades before quitting cold turkey in 1949 — six years before that heart attack, and a confounder that rarely gets mentioned in the same breath as “he liked rich food” [14].

Around the same time, researcher Ancel Keys was building the case that saturated fat, not smoking or sugar, was the primary driver of heart disease. His earliest version of that case, a 1953 presentation, plotted six countries and showed a striking near-perfect line between fat intake and heart disease. But data existed for far more countries than that.

When researchers Yerushalmy and Hilleboe re-ran the numbers in 1957 using all 22 countries with FAO and WHO data on hand, the correlation weakened substantially [15]. Keys’s later, formal Seven Countries Study (1958–1970) drew its own separate methodological criticism over how its populations were selected — a point even Henry Blackburn, one of the study’s own lead investigators, acknowledged in his own writing on the study’s history [16]. None of that proves saturated fat is harmless. It does mean the foundational case against it was built on a narrower, more selectively framed slice of the data than most people were ever told, and that guidance is also what pushed Americans toward the partially hydrogenated oils discussed above — the actual, unambiguous villain of this whole story, now largely regulated out of the food supply.

The lesson isn’t that fat itself is dangerous — it’s that swapping it wholesale for refined carbohydrates, which is what many people actually did, may have traded one problem for another [3]. And it’s worth asking, every time a health authority hands down a verdict: who reviewed the data, who funded it, and who profits from you believing it. That’s not cynicism. That’s due diligence — and it’s exactly what “just the messenger” means.

So what now

1. Check your pantry for “partially hydrogenated oil” on any label — rare in 2026, but check anyway.
2. Use the chart above instead of memorizing rules. Olive and avocado oil for most cooking, flaxseed or walnut for dressings, butter/ghee/lard/coconut oil as occasional flavor, not daily defaults.
3. Don’t reuse or overheat oil — that’s the one place the evidence is unanimous.
4. Ask your doctor for a full lipid panel — total cholesterol alone tells you less than LDL particle type, HDL, and triglycerides.
5. Hold two ideas at once: the saturated-fat conversation is more nuanced than it used to be, and mainstream cardiovascular guidance still says reach for unsaturated oil most of the time. Both are true.

Medical disclaimer: This article is for general informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and doesn’t replace a conversation with a licensed physician or registered dietitian. Dietary fat recommendations vary by individual health status — talk to your doctor before making significant changes, especially if you have cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or high cholesterol.

The oil change of the 20th century was made with good intentions and incomplete data. This one should be made with better sourcing, a label you actually read, and a question or two for your own doctor. I’m just sayin’.

Sources & Further Reading

1. American Heart Association. Healthy Cooking Oils. heart.org — https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/fats/healthy-cooking-oils
2. Siri-Tarino, P.W., et al. (2010). Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 91(3), 535–546. https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.2009.27725
3. Chowdhury, R., et al. (2014). Association of dietary, circulating, and supplement fatty acids with coronary risk. Annals of Internal Medicine, 160(6), 398–406. https://doi.org/10.7326/M13-1788
4. Simopoulos, A.P. (2016). An increase in the omega-6/omega-3 fatty acid ratio increases the risk for obesity. Nutrients, 8(3), 128. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu8030128
5. U.S. FDA. (2018). Final Determination Regarding Partially Hydrogenated Oils. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/final-determination-regarding-partially-hydrogenated-oils
6. American Heart Association. (2021). Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease. https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/fats/dietary-fats
7. Cleveland Clinic / Julia Zumpano, RD, LD. Choosing and Using Cooking Oils: What to Use and When. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-to-choose-and-use-healthy-cooking-oils
8. Weil, A. Is Lard Healthy? https://www.drweil.com/diet-nutrition/nutrition/is-lard-healthy/
9. American Heart Association. (2024). There’s No Reason to Avoid Seed Oils and Plenty of Reasons to Eat Them. https://www.heart.org/en/news/2024/08/20/theres-no-reason-to-avoid-seed-oils-and-plenty-of-reasons-to-eat-them
10. Cleveland Clinic / Julia Zumpano, RD, LD. Seed Oils: Are They Actually Toxic? https://health.clevelandclinic.org/seed-oils-are-they-actually-toxic
11. WHO. (2023). Eliminating Industrially-Produced Trans Fats. https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/nutrition-trans-fat
12. Keys, A. (1970). Coronary heart disease in seven countries. Circulation, 41(4 Suppl), I1-211. https://doi.org/10.1161/01.CIR.41.4S1.I-1
13. Truth in Advertising. (2018). Heart-Healthy Certification: The Price is the Right. https://truthinadvertising.org/articles/aha-certified-brands-challenged-for-failing-to-disclose-paid-endorsement/
14. Messerli, F.H., & Messerli, A.W. (2009). Eisenhower’s 1955 heart attack: medical treatment and political effects. PubMed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19213302/
15. Yerushalmy, J., & Hilleboe, H.E. (1957). Fat in the diet and mortality from heart disease: a methodologic note. New York State Journal of Medicine, 57, 2343–2354. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13441073/
16. Seven Countries Study. Henry Blackburn — investigator biography and study history. https://www.sevencountriesstudy.com/about-the-study/investigators/henry-blackburn/

About the Author

Lynn Peterson (“Lynn Pete”) is an instructor, writer, researcher, and health and nutrition blogger who describes herself as “just the messenger.” She hosts the Health News & Views: Food the Final Frontier podcast, dedicated to bringing clarity to the health disparities in Black and brown communities. She holds a B.A. in English/Communications and M.S. and D.Sc. degrees in Education, and is a Certified Post-Secondary Instructor and Certified Health Coach. Her book, Food: The Final Frontier — The Plain Truth About Food, Chronic Disease & Health in Black & Brown Communities, arrives September 2026.

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER

This article is for general informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice and should not replace consultation with a licensed physician or qualified healthcare provider. The author is a Certified Health Coach, not a licensed medical doctor. Dietary fat recommendations vary by individual health status. Always consult your doctor or a registered dietitian before making significant changes to your diet, particularly if you have cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or high cholesterol.

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