This is Day 4 of the 5-Day Healthier Eating Challenge. To start at the beginning, click here.
So far, these challenges have kept you at home. You’ve scanned ingredients lists, conducted a taste test and zhuzhed up some snacks — all without straying too far from your kitchen.
But today, we’re heading to a real-life grocery store to identify ultraprocessed foods and their less processed alternatives.
If this sounds daunting, don’t worry. I called a few experts to help us out. Marion Nestle, an emerita professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, agreed to come to my local supermarket so we could look at food labels together.
I also chatted with two other experts to learn how they make choices when they’re shopping.
Well Challenge Day 4: Grocery shop like a nutrition scientist.
First, think of an ultraprocessed food you regularly buy: Maybe it’s frozen pizza or a packaged snack.
Then, go to a grocery store and read the label for that food. Note how many ingredients you don’t recognize. Take a few minutes and compare it with similar items: If you’re looking at strawberry yogurt, scan its ingredients list alongside those of other strawberry yogurts. Is there a less processed choice you can make that still falls within your price range?
Notice the ingredients that make a UPF a UPF.
As we cruised the aisles, Dr. Nestle flagged certain ingredients that signal that a food or drink may be ultraprocessed. These include thickeners like modified starches, gums (xanthan gum, guar gum), emulsifiers (like soy lecithin and carrageenan), artificial sweeteners (like Stevia and Splenda), synthetic food dyes (like Red 40 and Yellow 5), artificial flavors and other ingredients that aren’t normally found in home kitchens or even grocery stores.
And while the conventional wisdom is that a long list of ingredients means a food is ultraprocessed, that is not always the case, Dr. Nestle said.
Some frozen meals, for example, may have a lengthy list of ingredients, but all of them are recognizable, she said. From the freezer case, she pulled out a frozen lasagna made with ingredients like tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, beef and onions.
“Nothing artificial,” Dr. Nestle said.
Get curious about ingredients you don’t recognize.
Nutrition experts, even with their deep knowledge, still come across unfamiliar ingredients. During our trip, Dr. Nestle peered at the label of a flavored yogurt: “Cultured dextrose,” she remarked. “I don’t know what that is.” She looked it up and said that it appeared to inhibit bacteria growth in food.
If you encounter an ingredient that you don’t recognize, Dr. Nestle said, that may be a sign that it’s a UPF. She recommended checking the database of food additives from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. (Dr. Nestle and I did this right in Aisle 7.)
Then you can decide if it’s right for you. The presence of just one of these ingredients makes it an ultraprocessed food, but you may be fine with that, said Maya Vadiveloo, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of Rhode Island. If you see an emulsifier in a whole-grain bread, “it’s not necessarily a reason to not pick it up,” she said. (In fact, one study we mentioned on Day 1 of this challenge found that some ultraprocessed foods, including whole-grain breads, were associated with reduced risks for cardiovascular disease.)
And some ingredients that are unrecognizable to many people may actually be vitamins, Dr. Nestle said, like sodium ascorbate (vitamin C), pyridoxine (vitamin B6) and alpha-tocopherol acetate (vitamin E). These do not make something a UPF, she said.
Don’t equate words like ‘wholesome’ and ‘natural’ with ‘unprocessed.’
Just because a food label contains a picture of a garden or words like “natural” or “plant-based” doesn’t mean it’s not ultraprocessed, said Josiemer Mattei, an associate professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Foods such as veggie burgers or frozen “healthy” meals can have many ingredients that make them ultraprocessed.
On the front of the package, the manufacturer may list what is not in the food (“no trans fats,” “no high-fructose corn syrup”), but the item may contain other ingredients that make it a UPF, Dr. Mattei added.
Do a quick comparison of similar products.
I soon learned that the level of processing can vary wildly among my favorite snacks, even those from the same brand. When I showed Dr. Nestle my afternoon go-to — White Cheddar PopCorners — she examined the label and said it was ultraprocessed.
Then she picked up the kettle corn-flavored version. “Aha,” she said. “Yellow corn, sunflower oil, cane sugar and sea salt. That’s it. Four ingredients. Not ultraprocessed.”
If you’re willing to make a relatively painless swap — trading cheese for kettle corn was not a problem for me — it’s worth taking a few minutes to scan labels for less processed alternatives, Dr. Nestle added.
When options are limited, look for short ingredient lists.
After our supermarket outing, Dr. Nestle and I drove to a convenience store, where I asked her to find some food and drinks that were not ultraprocessed.
After rummaging for a bit, Dr. Nestle grabbed an apple, orange juice, plain yogurt, salted pistachios and Fritos (its three ingredients — corn, vegetable oil and salt — make it a non-UPF), although the store did not have her preferred “lightly salted” version of the chips.
My diet will never be as wholesome as Dr. Nestle’s. (“One rule I have is never to eat anything artificial,” she said.) But I did note her unflagging energy at age 88: When I drove her back to the train station, she jogged briskly up the steps. I, however, needed a nap.
