3 types of ultra-processed foods that may be healthier than homemade

If you’ve ever heard that ultra-processed foods can cause people to overeat and gain weight, then you’re familiar with the work of nutrition scientist Kevin Hall.

These days, whenever experts talk about the irrefutable dangers of ultra-processed foods, they’re usually a breath away from mentioning Hall’s research. His seminal study, published in 2019 and conducted at the National Institutes of Health’s human metabolism lab, was the first and only to show us how ultra-processed diets drive people to consume about 500 extra calories per day, without even realizing it.

But do not ask Hall to get prescriptive or dogmatic about healthy eating or “whole” foods and “clean” eating, unprocessed trends. He just won’t go there.

“I don’t stand on my soapbox to claim to know all the answers,” Hall said. At this point, ultra-processed foods are just a part of our modern life living under a giant commercial food system. Roughly 60% of the American diet is ultra-processed.

“If you can avoid them, that’s wonderful, but most people can’t,” Hall said of ultra-processed foods.

Still, he believes that we can make imperfect — but health-forward — decisions about the foods we choose to consume.

Here are his best tips for selecting more “potentially healthy ultra-processed foods.”

Don’t assume all ultra-processed foods are created equal

Categorizing a food as “ultra-processed” doesn’t tell you which nutrients are in it.

Categorizing a food as an ultra-processed food doesn’t technically tell you anything about the nutrients in that particular food.

Scientists use a system for classifying UPFs called NOVA, which was developed in 2009. The NOVA system divides foods we eat into four basic categories, based on their level of processing:

NOVA 1: completely unprocessed items like plants and animal products, as well as minimally processed items that have not been preserved or seasoned in any way, like a fresh-pressed juice, dried herb, or unsweetened yogurt.
NOVA 2: called “culinary ingredients,” these are natural items that have been crushed or processed for seasoning food, like oils, syrups, honey, butter or lard, salt, and corn starch.
NOVA 3: any food that is combined, cooked, altered, preserved, pickled or seasoned in any way. This could be anything from a fresh homemade bread, to canned beans, salted nuts, cheese, or pickles.
NOVA 4: ultra-processed foods and ready-to-eat items that can only be made in a factory.
So, NOVA is all about how the food is made. But it doesn’t give any consideration to the composition of fat, sugar, protein, carbohydrates, calories, vitamins, and fiber in a given food

Hall worries that if we all become hyper-focused on categorizing foods into “healthy” and “unhealthy” based on their NOVA number, we’re missing a larger point.

After all, you can make rich and irresistible ice cream at home, or have an ultra-processed vegetable stir fry that comes in a plastic bag but has way more fiber and vitamins.

“Some of those NOVA 4 products are high in all the good things and low in a lot of the bad things that we traditionally think of in terms of nutrition,” Hall said. “I would argue that that probably has a good chance of being a healthy ultra-processed food.”

So a ready-to-heat frozen dinner in a bag that includes spinach, red bell peppers, garbanzo beans and quinoa — while it is definitely an ultra-processed food that’s been manufactured with stabilizers like xanthan gum in it — still likely has a lot of nutrition packed inside.

“What we’re basically doing is we’re using everything else that we’ve learned in nutrition science and applying it,” Hall said.

A 2024 study seems to support this eating strategy — it suggested that ultra-processed meats, sugary beverages like soda, and sweets (desserts, sugary cereals) may be more dangerous than other ultra-processed options, and they’re linked to a greater risk of early death.

3 things to look for in ultra-processed foods

Whole-grain oats, seeds, beans, and veggies are great options.

In general, Hall says, pick ultra-processed foods with lots of:

Whole grains (could be quinoa, oats, or brown rice)
Non-starchy vegetables (like broccoli, spinach, or green beans)
Legumes (including beans, lentils, and peanuts)
You should also avoid foods that are high in saturated fat, added sugar, and sodium.

Salt can be especially hard to avoid. It’s a handy preservative and flavor-amplifier abundant in many UPFs. “A lot of them are still a little too high in sodium, but you can try to choose better ones,” Hall added.

Make it your mission to increase your vegetable intake

A bowl of packaged oatmeal for breakfast or a high-protein bean and cheese burrito from the freezer aisle for dinner won’t be the end of your health.

But if there is a whole-food option, go for it — and see it as a treat, a burst of nutrients to fuel your longevity.

Hall is currently studying the health benefits of adding a side salad or some non-starchy veggies to a processed meal. He has a hunch that it may help to blunt some of the harms of ultra-processed diets.

But he’s also a busy, working parent and he — like so many of us — is just trying to do the best he can with the money, time, and knowledge he has on hand.

“Would it be better if you had made the homemade version?” he wonders. “Maybe. It’s possible that there’s some weird additive or something, an ingredient in that food that is not good for you. We don’t have the science on that yet, but applying what we do know, I think you can still make educated choices.”