Close your eyes and imagine a shopping cart full of ultraprocessed foods.
Yes, it probably contains items like potato chips and hot dogs. But ultraprocessed foods is a wide-ranging category that also includes foods you might associate with nutritious eating, like many whole grain breads, breakfast cereals and flavored yogurts. This can make recognizing them confusing.
Ultraprocessed foods are commonly defined as any foods or drinks made with ingredients you wouldn’t typically find in a home kitchen. These include artificial flavors, synthetic food dyes, hydrogenated oils, and emulsifiers that help blend ingredients that don’t normally mix (like oil and water).
About 58 percent of the American diet is ultraprocessed. And scientists have found associations between ultraprocessed foods and a number of health conditions, including heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and mental health issues like anxiety and depression.
So are ultraprocessed foods worth eliminating from your diet? Let us help you figure it out.
On Jan. 6, 2025, we’ll kick off a week of evidence-based tips and that will help you understand more about ultraprocessed foods: What’s in them? How can you identify them? And what small changes can you make to your plate for better health?
This weeklong challenge is not about overhauling your diet. It’s full of fun, illuminating experiments that will help you get a closer look at ultraprocessed foods and your relationship to them. There will be taste tests, recipes, a trip to the grocery store and other surprises.
Jancee Dunn, Well’s columnist, will be your guide — along with Alice Callahan, our nutrition reporter, who has covered ultraprocessed foods extensively. We’ll also talk to various nutrition and food science experts.
We hope you will end the week feeling more capable and confident in your food choices, and with a few new habits for a healthier year ahead.
How to get started
To receive each day’s challenge, make sure you’re signed up for the Well newsletter, which is available exclusively to New York Times subscribers.
If you already subscribe to the Well newsletter, you don’t need to do anything.
If you haven’t received the newsletter before, you can subscribe below.
What you’ll get:
An email will arrive in your inbox each morning from Jan. 6 to Jan. 10. Once the challenge ends, you will get our Well newsletter, which features guidance to live your healthiest life, delivered every Thursday.
If you already receive the Well newsletter, you will automatically get the challenge, and will not see a way to sign up below. You can find out which newsletters you are signed up for here.
