San Francisco is the kind of heavily Democratic city that the Trump administration often targets. But there's one issue they agree on. They're both taking aim at ultra-processed food. In the first lawsuit of its kind, San Francisco is suing 11 of the nation's top food companies, saying they sell ultra-processed food knowing that they are harmful to health.
By some estimates, more than 60 percent of the food consumed in the United States is ultra-processed. A growing body of scientific
research says diet high in ultra-processed food lead to chronic diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and depression.
Earlier, John Yang spoke with Ashley Gearhardt, a University of Michigan psychology professor who studies addiction.
John Yang:
Some critics say that the term ultra-processed food lacks a definition. It's too broad that it scoops up a lot of products that may actually be healthy and excludes some that aren't. What do you say to that?
Ashley Gearhardt:
The problem that's happening right now is when we just focus on specific nutrients like sugar or fiber, fat, the industry's been able to use that to do nutrient whack-a-mole. They can pull so many different levers and distract us. So we're eating ultra-processed junk that isn't nourishing us from, you know, low carb diet coke to, you know, low fat snack wells. And we're forgetting what is real food and ultraprocessed food by being.
This paradigm shift of really showing what that category is has really changed the name of the game and helped us work in a way that reflects the complexity of the industrial processes that we're now faced with.
Read the complete article in the PBS
