
You might be hearing a lot about ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, and how we should all be avoiding them. But you might be struggling with figuring out what exactly IS an ultra-processed food. Sweetened drinks, sure. What about bread? Yoghurt? Norman and Tegan unpack why it isn’t a simple question, and where the evidence stands on the health consequences. References: Ultra-Processed Foods and Human Health - The Lancet series Diet quality and processed foods – Food Standards Australia and New Zealand Most of the Foods We Eat Are Ultra-Processed. Are They All Unhealthy? - Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Trends of obesity and underweight in older children and adolescents in the United States, Brazil, China, and Russia Ultra-processed products are becoming dominant in the global food system The UN Decade of Nutrition, the NOVA food classification and the trouble with ultra-processing Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epide...
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Glenn Washington
I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment, the award winning storytelling podcast from kqed. Every week Snap deals a new card. Like the girl whose sister was a monkey. Or the man who lived in the woods for 30 years. Or even the woman who snuck her lover out of prison in a dog crate. Pick a card, any card. Tap to listen. Now to Snap Judgment from KQED on Spotify.
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Tegan Taylor
treat, cur any disease, ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more. One of the most ambitious projects in human history. It's almost like the atomic bomb in terms of its transformational effect. For decades, the breakthrough has been just around the corner. That would bring our financial markets and electronic commerce to a grinding halt. Will quantum computers change everything? I'm Jacinta Boaler. Binge the whole series now. Search for science dead and alive on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. Norman, what is your favourite ultra processed food?
Dr. Norman Swan
Oh God.
Tegan Taylor
You are going to be cancelled.
Dr. Norman Swan
Professional. I can't resist a good sausage.
Tegan Taylor
I shouldn't laugh as much. Okay, cool. Do you want to unpack that anymore?
Dr. Norman Swan
Okay. Do you want me? Okay, go on. Since it's just you and me and nobody's listening.
Tegan Taylor
Yeah. This is a safe space.
Dr. Norman Swan
As a good Jewish boy, I have to admit I love a British pork sausage.
Tegan Taylor
You really are going to get cancelled.
Dr. Norman Swan
I am. I'm done. Next time I go to synagogue, I'm screwed.
Tegan Taylor
Oh my gosh. Mine isn't quite as controversial as that. My favourite ultra processed food is nerds. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Dr. Norman Swan
No.
Tegan Taylor
Those little. Come on, you've got children, you've got grandchildren. Nerds that like their little candies. They're like brightly coloured. They're sort of sour. They're amazing.
Dr. Norman Swan
I've always hated those. Used to call them boilings in Glasgow. Boilings.
Tegan Taylor
Boilings. What now? I'm looking this up. Wait, Google is failing me here. I'll just have to believe you. No nerds I guess in a sense you truly are what you eat. But yes, that would be my idea
Dr. Norman Swan
on the what's Rat Rash audience internationally to come to my rescue on Boilings.
Tegan Taylor
Well we are going to be talking today about ultra processed foods here on what's that Rash.
Dr. Norman Swan
That's the show where we answer the health questions that everybody is asking.
Tegan Taylor
Well today we have questions from Carmen and from Renee, both asking about ultra processed foods. Carmen starts with a nice opening salvo which is basically just buttering us up. Carmen says, my partner and I love your podcast and frequently discuss the topics that come up each week, often in debate. But Dr. Norman Swan said X is an argument that neither of us will have any rebuttal to anyway. Carmen continues after watching a recent TV program about ultra processed foods, we couldn't quite agree on whether we thought that ultra processed foods should inherently be labelled as bad for you. Is there any real evidence specifically regarding the additives or manufacturing processes leading to health implications? Or is it unfair to label these foods as bad when it could just be tied back to an overall unhealthy diet? That is the ultra processed label doesn't add anything to what we already know about which foods are unhealthy for us. I'm interested to hear your take on this and hopefully my partner and I will be able to settle our debate in my favour. Of course.
Dr. Norman Swan
But you haven't bribed us Carbon. How could we possibly go adjudicate in your favour?
Tegan Taylor
But anyway, and Renee says after watching a program on television recently, I'm interested in hearing your review of the evidence about the consumption of ultra processed foods and health outcomes. So both Carmen and Renae are referencing a television program. I know there's a lot out there about ultra processed foods, but I'm choosing to believe that they've been watching the recent ABC coverage from Four Corners. Don't correct us if we're wrong Carmen
Dr. Norman Swan
and Renee yeah, I mean when these questions came through you and I thought we'd already done this.
Tegan Taylor
On WhatsApp rash I was honestly shooketh to discover that we hadn't done a dedicated episode on ultra processed foods. Cause I have so many memories of talking about these foods with you Norman, both on the Health Report when we worked together on that a couple of years ago and obviously on whatsaturash we have kind of talked about it a bit. We did the episode on seed oils, we did one on if there's any point in having a gluten free diet if you're not celiac. But we haven't Done a dedicated episode on ultra processed foods before and today we remedy this.
Dr. Norman Swan
Thank you for your questions. Forcing us to confront the reality that we need to confront it.
Tegan Taylor
So I think, as with all good WhatsAppresh episodes, it would behoove us to start with a definition. I think people have a vibe as to what an ultra processed food is, and probably largely they would be correct in categorising things as ultra processed foods. Maybe there are things that you wouldn't realize are ultra processed foods. But let's talk about how we actually came to have this moniker.
Dr. Norman Swan
Well, it's a definition which comes from something called the NOVA food classification. And this arose from research looking at changing diets in South America. Moving away from the traditional diets of say, rice and beans towards more bought foods out of supermarkets, which tended to be really gradations of the food categories that people were eating. But moving further and further away from what the food writer Michael Pollan would call food that your grandmother would recognize as food.
Tegan Taylor
Yeah, so the NOVA system basically has like four categories. The first one is unprocessed or minimally processed foods. Like you might have a carrot and chop it. Technically you've processed that, that would still be in category one. Second is processed culinary ingredients, things like oils and butters and that sort of thing.
Dr. Norman Swan
And yogurt would probably fit with that. Unsweetened yogurt.
Tegan Taylor
Exactly. And then number three is processed foods. So foods that have undergone some sort of process, but maybe like a more traditional processing. So like grinding flour to then bake into that you might be able to bake at your own kitchen or pickling or fermenting foods. That's all processing. And then ultra processing basically being things that you couldn't do in a commercial kitchen or that you can't do without. Specialty ingredients that, like you said, using this sort of grandmother analogy, your grandma probably wouldn't recognise those ingredients.
Dr. Norman Swan
No. And the definition would say that there are five or more ingredients, substances extracted from foods, processing of food components, food additives such as colours, flavours, non sugar sweeteners, processing aids a lot of it's cheap, empty calories, often with high degrees of sweetness and fat, which tend to have an addictive quality. Nobody's quite sure what causes that. It's probably a brain effect as well as a blood sugar effect. But sweet or savory snacks, carbonated drinks, ice cream, chocolate, confectionery in general, mass produced packaged breads and buns that last forever, hardly ever goes stale. Margarines and spreads, my favorite sausages and some Burgers, I mean, not all burgers, but some burgers would qualify as ultra processed.
Tegan Taylor
So I think there's a lot of things in that list that you just rattled off that no one is surprised to hear that. Candies or fluoro orange extruded corn, crunchy snack. That kind of goes without saying. If it comes in a packet with a cartoon character on the front, it's probably ultra processed. But the thing that's kind of confusing in this category is that there are a lot of things that we might otherwise think of as being healthy or kind of neutral foods that technically, if you're taking this very strict chemical definition, would be ultra processed. So there's sort of a scenario that you could imagine where two people have got their shopping trolleys. One's got instant noodles, hot dogs, ice cream, soft drinks, and the other has bread and breakfast cereal and reduced fat peanut butter and fruit flavoured yoghurt. And there's a scenario in which both of those trolleys are full of ultra processed foods, even though one looks healthier than the other.
Dr. Norman Swan
Yeah. And common sense would tell you that some of those items would not necessarily be a problem. Although breakfast cereals can be. I mean, that's the classic example of an industrially manufactured food that doesn't bear any resemblance to normal foods. Toddler foods often are like this, where you have a lot of sweeteners in the foods. They call them organic because there's nothing in it that's natural, therefore you can call it organic. I mean, toilet foods are probably the most pernicious part of this. And maybe jumping to the risks of ultra processed foods, when I did my Four Corners last year on early onset cancer, there was a direct line from ultra processed foods in children and early onset cancer. Because what they found is that you get such a change in the microbiome in your bowel because you are not eating natural foods and you get toxic E Coli estericio, E. Coli, which produce a toxin which is carcinogenic.
Tegan Taylor
So you're gesturing at part of the question which is, are they harmful? And at least in some instances, what you're saying to me says maybe yes. And part of Carmen's question was, should they be labelled as such? So maybe before we get to labelling and we get to policy and all that sort of thing, let's talk about what we know about the health effects of ultra processed foods. And I do want to just sort of forewarn. We are absolutely going to sprinkle a very, very healthy dose of nuance over this. But let's Just talk about broad brush strokes.
Dr. Norman Swan
What we know, broad brushstrokes that when you are at the extreme end where there's no doubt that this is ultra processed, you tend to have these foods designed for maximum consumption and they do not give normal satiety signals back to the brain or back to the rest of the gut. So you're absorbing highly processed carbohydrates, proteins and fats, which get absorbed quickly and don't give signals to stop eating. And therefore you consume more and more of them. And they're often high in calories anyway and low in nutrients. And therefore you lay down fat and you develop, say, the metabolic syndrome, which is abdominal girth, poor blood sugar control, hormones get triggered, which are part of the cancer causation pathway. So there is a link to that. There is a link to coronary heart disease. So the research that's been done in this area, and there's a lot of it, is that when you eat cheap, empty calories, you do increase the risk of particularly coronary heart disease or overweight, obesity, and almost certainly cancer too.
Tegan Taylor
Okay. Part of the question was really about whether there's something special about ultra processing the process, or if it's just the fact that a lot of these foods tend to have high levels of fat, salt and sugar in them, which, whether they were ultra processed or not, is possibly going to lead to a lot of these same health effects.
Dr. Norman Swan
So there have been studies on this?
Tegan Taylor
Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, the one that springs to mind for me, it's from about five or six years ago now, where basically they had two groups of people and they kind of locked them away for four weeks, which we don't often get to do with food studies. Often food studies are asking people what they've been eating. People are notoriously bad at remembering and reporting that. And so they had. It's quite a small study, but they managed to basically control every morsel that went in these people's mouths. And for two weeks, one group was given ultra processed food, so things like frozen lasagnas and cereals and those sorts of things, cakes and that sort of stuff. And you could eat as much or as little as you wanted over that time. And the other group was given sort of the equivalent kinds of food, but not ultra processed. And again, they were allowed to eat as much or as little as they liked. And then the two groups swapped and they found that there was stuff going on in those two groups, not least of which was the sort of amount of energy that they took in. So the people in the ultra processed groups, when they were able to sort of eat to satiety, were eating about 500 calories a day more than the people in the quote unquote healthy group.
Dr. Norman Swan
Which goes along with the research from people like Luigi Fontana at Sydney University, which shows that when he feeds people a pescatarian diet that's basically a, oh, Mediterranean diet, it's actually quite hard for people to maintain their weight.
Tegan Taylor
Yeah. So, I mean, those diet studies are looking at the macro level. Right. Like human body eating foods and digesting them and, and what happens down the track from that. There's also been studies that have looked at the micro level, looking at the food matrix, basically the structure of the food that it is when it goes into your mouth versus what your body eventually breaks down into the sugars and nutrients and vitamins that your body needs to function. Our bodies are really good at breaking food down into those things.
Dr. Norman Swan
So it's essentially the whole, wholesome, as in wholesome nature of unprocessed foods.
Tegan Taylor
Yeah. And that with the ultra processing that, it's almost like the food industry is digesting your food for you ahead of time. Whether there's maybe something in this destruction of the food matrix to make these foods so refined and palatable that maybe our bodies are losing something along the way.
Dr. Norman Swan
And the other aspect of this that we haven't discussed is mental health. It's been increasingly recognised that the microbiome has a lot to do with mental health as well. And there is some research which suggests that greater exposure to ultra processed foods at the extreme, which is what we're talking about here, highly processed gets straight into your bloodstream changes. The microbiome can affect your sleep and can affect depression and anxiety as well.
Tegan Taylor
So one of the parts of the question here is how big of a problem is it? And we actually have data around how much of our diet is made up of these foods in aggregate. So there was a series of research papers published in the journal the Lancet towards the end of last year saying that almost half of what Australians eat is ultra processed food. So it's making up quite a large chunk of what we're eating.
Dr. Norman Swan
Yeah. And it's not just the ultra processed foods that you're eating, but there is some evidence that you're getting an increased consumption of plastics in them as well.
Tegan Taylor
Oh, Norman, we can only scare the people about one thing per episode. Yeah, we've got to keep that up. We actually have already talked about microplastics before, haven't we? Haven't we?
Dr. Norman Swan
We Have.
Tegan Taylor
Anyway, anyway, let us talk about what we collectively maybe do about it. If the evidence is pointing towards ultra processed foods being somehow especially not good for us, do we need warning labels like Carmen was pondering? Are there other levers that we could be pulling? Are we kind of taking it seriously enough?
Dr. Norman Swan
Well, the answer is no, we're not. And I would point to the second part of the Four Corners series on food, which is talking about regulation. We've known for a while that there's a real problem with food regulation in Australia. We crow and boast about how safe our food supply is, but the reality is we've got representatives of the global food industry on our food standards organization, Food Standards Australia and New Zealand fazans. And it's interesting that they talk about standards, but not food Health Australia and New Zealand, you would not have the tobacco industry or the alcohol industry on bodies that are controlling tobacco and alcohol. But we've got the food industry influencing policy. And so one of the problems now that we face in Australia is that the star system is gamed by the
Tegan Taylor
food industry, the health star rating. Well, I mean, in a sense, let's. I want to unpack what you mean by gamed. I think in a sense having a system like that basically encourages reformulation by food companies, which perhaps isn't necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps the way that we're asking them.
Dr. Norman Swan
Well, I think it is a bad thing to disagree.
Tegan Taylor
Okay, all right.
Dr. Norman Swan
So why it's a bad thing is they don't change the ultra processed nature of the food that they're making. They'll throw in a vitamin or two, or they'll throw in some carbohydrates or they'll swap some sugars for different kinds of sugars just to fit with the categorization, rather than zooming out and saying, what is this food? This is an ultra processed food that bypasses normal satiety levels and likely to increase the intake of calories and fat.
Tegan Taylor
Well, that's what I mean. If those are the things that we're focusing on. If the kind of boxes that you need to tick to get a certain health star are those boxes, then they've been ticked. We need to require different boxes to be ticked.
Dr. Norman Swan
And my prediction is you won't as long as you've got representatives of the food industry on our regulator. It's an extraordinary situation with extraordinary levels of conflict of interest which are impossible to manage properly. And I can remember the Grocery Council a few years ago really weighing in on the traffic light system that Britain's got not wanting it here. And you could be sure that if representatives of the food industry through the grocery Council were objecting to it and screaming so loudly. There's something good about the traffic light system in the United Kingdom.
Tegan Taylor
So there's different things in different countries. There's the traffic light system in the uk, like you said, there's like black warning labels in some countries in South America. There's other levers that are potentially able to be pulled. Things like how these foods are taxed, maybe whether they're allowed to have price promotions or promotions in supermarkets around them. And then also there's the Australian Dietary Guidelines, which currently don't really talk about ultra processed foods because the last time they were published that was 2013, which is when this was very much an emerging thing. They're currently under review. Talking about ultra processed foods is part of their remit. But we're probably not going to see those guidelines come out until 2027.
Dr. Norman Swan
And we're supposed to be changing the rules about toddler foods as well.
Tegan Taylor
And on the idea of taxing these foods. I think one of the things that's worth calling out about ultra processed foods is that they tend to be quite cheap. They certainly tend to be quite cheap per calorie, which means they're often very affordable. They're also shelf stable and they're often the sorts of things that you find in places like food banks and stuff. So in addition to it being a health issue, it's very much an equity issue too.
Dr. Norman Swan
It is not saying it's an easy solution, but we probably do need to start with our regulator and also the Trade Practices act about what you're allowed to say about these foods.
Tegan Taylor
Okay, so we are this whole conversation, we've still been very much sweeping everything ultra processed into one big umbrella category. I think it's probably worth talking about if we're going to regulate something is calling anything that is ultra processed, anything that has one of these industrial processes or industrial chemicals in it unhealthy and bad for you and should have a warning label on it because a common sen. Understanding, unless I'm missing something fundamental here, Norman, that like wholemeal bread should just be slapped with the same warning label as a brightly coloured breakfast cereal that's absolutely encrusted in sugar. That just doesn't feel right to me.
Dr. Norman Swan
So you talk about taxation, Tegan. Really most taxation policies internationally are over simple foods that could make a big difference, sugar sweetened beverages being the main one.
Tegan Taylor
So like our category of foods where there's fairly good evidence and uncomplicated, complicated.
Dr. Norman Swan
You're not going to die. You can buy soda water or you can have tap water. I appreciate in some parts of the world safe water is an issue, but taxing sweetened beverages is an easy answer to this. Taxing fat is more nuanced. And having proper labeling, though, for the ultra processed spectrum is something that is required.
Tegan Taylor
This is the thing. I wonder whether we need a better definition of ultra processed than just the NOVA classification if we're going to have a useful discussion about what we do as an individual, like when I'm shopping at the supermarket, and then also what we do societally in terms of regulation and that sort of thing. Because you're not going to slap the same warning label on whole grain bread as you would on a super sugary cereal or confectionery. Something that is not necessary for a healthy diet.
Dr. Norman Swan
Yeah. And it's not beyond people who are expert in this area to actually come up with something that's more effective than what we've got, which is misleading.
Tegan Taylor
So we mentioned our regulators already. We mentioned the dietary guidelines. Those things are big. Those wheels turn very slowly. What do I do today if I'm Carmen or Renee and I'm trying to sort the wheat from the chaff? Maybe you leave the chaff in. Maybe the separating wheat from the chaff was processing. Maybe we should have left it in the whole time.
Dr. Norman Swan
Perhaps swapping cereals for oats or multigrain. Be careful of things like almond milk, which is highly processed.
Tegan Taylor
Ah, we didn't talk about specialty foods for people with different dietary needs. Yeah, plant based milks, vegan alternatives, gluten free alternatives. These are often places where people find that an ultra processed food is kind of their main option if they want to have that type of food.
Dr. Norman Swan
Ditch your soft drinks and sport drinks for natural drinks like milk, water or juice with bread. The ultra processed breads, the white variety that's sliced is better changed for multigrain bread ice cream, either the occasional treat or move to plain yogurt.
Tegan Taylor
Okay, I'm either eating plain yogurt or I'm eating ice cream. Those things are two different categories for me.
Dr. Norman Swan
I never have ice cream in the morning. That's right. And when you're eating red meat, for example, go for red meat that's unprocessed and low fat rather than processed meats, which are definitely associated with an increased risk of colon cancer. And the other thing in terms of a definition of ultra processed foods is just the number of ingredients and the number of additives, and those additives are really not proven in terms of their effect on our health and wellbeing.
Tegan Taylor
I would jump in here and say probably fed is best. If you sort of like, should I eat nothing today or should I eat an ultra processed food? If that's really the kind of equation that you're dealing with, then that's really rough. And I think you eat what you can. But I think from a practical perspective, when people have the resources available to them, the idea of crowding out less healthy food with more healthy food is the way I like to think of it. Instead of being like, I can't have this and I can't have that, it's like, well, I can have this and I can have that. And you just sort of keep adding those canned foods in until you don't have as much room in your diet for the stuff that's unhealthy. You crowded it out with delicious fruit and salads and whole grains and life's
Dr. Norman Swan
good and room in your tummy as well as room in your diet.
Tegan Taylor
And I guess the flip side of that is maybe. Well, the research seems to suggest that maybe at least part of the reason why ultra processed foods are less preferred or worse for us is because they're often displacing healthier foods in the diet. You sort of, you fill up on this stuff that's highly processed and you're not then eating the same amount of fruit, veggies, whole grains, all of that sort of thing that you might have otherwise eaten if those hadn't been on the table.
Dr. Norman Swan
So start with that and push out the ultra processed.
Tegan Taylor
Well, Renee, Carmen, thank you both so much for your questions. We hope that, Carmen, I hope you win your fight with your partner and I hope in general, this information has been useful. If you have a question for us, you can email us thatrashbc.net au we've
Dr. Norman Swan
had lots of feedback on our hair episode.
Tegan Taylor
Yeah, your friend, who is an art historian, emailed us. Norman.
Dr. Norman Swan
Yes, Candace emailed in. Do you know that story about John Ruskin being horrified on his wedding night that his bride had pubic hair because he'd only seen nudity in classical sculpture? And Candice goes on. The marriage was annulled after years and years and she immediately married the artist John Everett Millais and had eight children?
Tegan Taylor
Well, there you go. John Everett didn't mind it so much. And Gail said, any idea why humans have hair generally in places where other
Dr. Norman Swan
animals, well, animals kind of have hair everywhere?
Tegan Taylor
Well, I'm thinking about. Okay, think about orangutans. Like, they're quite hairy on their bodies, but they don't have that much hair under their arms. Whereas we have like hardly any hair on our bodies and lots of hair under our arms. What's going on?
Dr. Norman Swan
Whenever. Whenever you find something like this, which is hard to explain, then you cook up explanations that have got no way of being proven. So it's walking upright away. Did that change our hair pattern? Heat regulation. But you know, if we moved from, for example, tropical climes to northern Europe, you'd have thought we need more hair, not less. But, you know, hair removal has been this phenomenon, as we said in our episode, for many hundreds of years.
Tegan Taylor
One more. Paula from Canada says, re nose hair removal. Beware the ingrown hairs. That can happen. I know of what I speak.
Dr. Norman Swan
This is from waxing and plucking.
Tegan Taylor
She says, an ingrown hair inside your nostril. That would be so painful.
Dr. Norman Swan
Paula recommends using those little electric trimmers. Thank you.
Tegan Taylor
Same as Norman.
Dr. Norman Swan
That's right. It's done.
Tegan Taylor
Well, thank you for your emails. We love them. That rashbc.netu is our address. If you would like to add to our mail stash and if there are
Dr. Norman Swan
any other Canadians with ingrown hairs, please feel free to write in.
Tegan Taylor
We'll catch you next week.
Dr. Norman Swan
See you then.
Podcast Summary: What's That Rash? — "What is ultra-processed food?"
ABC Australia | Aired: August 4, 2026
Hosts: Tegan Taylor & Dr. Norman Swan
This episode tackles the growing public concern over ultra-processed foods (UPFs)—what they are, the health risks associated with them, and the potential need for regulation or warning labels. Listeners Carmen and Renee prompt hosts Tegan and Norman to explore if the "ultra-processed" label adds meaningful value over generic unhealthy-eating advice, delving into food classification, scientific evidence, and the tricky landscape of food policy in Australia.
The conversation balances informal, relatable humor with solid, evidence-based explanations. Both hosts stress nuance, avoiding moral judgments while recognizing systemic and regulatory failures. Practical advice is given without “food shaming,” urging listeners to seek whole and minimally processed options wherever possible, but with empathy for those facing barriers.
Bottom Line:
Ultra-processed foods are broadly linked to negative health outcomes beyond their nutrient content. While the “ultra-processed” label has limitations and grey areas, current policy and regulation don't go far enough. For now, focus on including more whole foods in the diet, watch for misleading labels, and keep the conversation going—regulation, equity, and scientific nuance all matter.