People who complain about “processed foods” generally have a basic misunderstanding of chemical/biochemical processes and energy gradients or activation energies.

Ultimately, everything is highly processed or we’d be eating rocks. The magnificent manufacturing line in animal or even plant cells is one of the most processed things at the finest molecular level that we know!

> In the end someone else cooks for you and packages it.

I think someone else cooking for you isn't the problem, the problem is at "packages it". Because, when you cook something at home, it's good for a few days to a week -- but food processors effectively always need various additives to keep the food shelf-stable for long enough for it to go factory -> warehouse -> store -> your house -> your meal. There are definitely exceptions (eg raisins are dried grapes, end of story) but generally this is the problem.

> Whole grain bread... very healthy.

Are you sure? Ever noticed how when you bake bread at home, it's basically 4 days on the counter before it's inedible, right? Yet commercial bread lasts for weeks.. ever wondered why that is?

As for processed food in general, I could be wrong, but my mental exercise goes along the lines of "would my great-grandma know what this is?" Eggs, butter, milk, fruits, vegetables, flour, rice, meat, fish, etc etc. But if it has an ingredients list and a nutrition label.. probably best to avoid making it a staple of your diet. Yes, I get it, cooking is a pain in the ass and everyone hates "the dinner problem", but IMO it's worth it for your health.

I think "highly processed foods are bad" is best seen as a general rule and no more than that. However, it is a good general rule and following it is probably the easiest way for people to eat healthy.

In general, the more processing steps involved, the more things companies can do to make the food more delicious, cheaper to produce, etc., at the expense of customers' health. There is also a significant correlation between "highly processed food" and "contains way too much refined grains and oil".

However, it's absolutely possible to process the food heavily and add lots of ingredients and still maintain a healthy food if you actually care about the customer's wellbeing. It would just result in a product that is less competitive in the short term, so companies have little to no incentive to do it.

what gave you the idea that infant formula is "very healthy". definitely not the case for 99% of infant formula in the USA, it's full of canola oil and crap

Kennedy is targeting baby formula.

> Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has directed the Food and Drug Administration to review the nutrients and other ingredients in infant formula, which fills the bottles of millions of American babies. The effort, dubbed “Operation Stork Speed,“ is the first deep look at the ingredients since 1998.

> “The FDA will use all resources and authorities at its disposal to make sure infant formula products are safe and wholesome for the families and children who rely on them,” Kennedy said.

https://news.wttw.com/2025/06/03/kennedy-has-ordered-review-...

They can also be a machine that might add a non-negligible amount of mineral oils and possibly other stuff to your food. The guideline to use should be that the ingredient list should be as short as possible. If it has more than 5 ingredients, that's already incredibly suspicious in my opinion. The problem is that some stuff (like a mineral oil contamination) doesn't even have to be declared on the ingredient list.

For example, normal simple bread should only have 4 or maybe 5 ingredients.

I doubt the issue is with processed food. Basically everything we eat is processed (even fruit and veg is selectively bred and has been for decades if not centuries). Bread and pasta is fine.

Ultra-processed is where all of our issues are coming from. If you can't identify ingredients in something, or you see e-numbers, emulsifiers and such, it's UPF. Essentially any fast food, branded items, ready meals or heavily plastic wrapped long-shelf life stuff.

Cognitive decline and overweight conditions have risen in line with the uptake of UPF. A 10% increase in UPF leads to 25% increase in the chance of dementia. UPF lead to overeating, and the way they are processed causes them to cause insulin spikes in the body which lead to inflammation, including in the brain.

My personal definition: If it was impossible for ancient Romans to make this food, it's highly processed. I think this is a pretty good heuristic.

besides being loud in the media and policy, does it matter?

to keep this focused on hacker news. this is like asking the programming community to solve "some intractable social problem," and then sometimes you get an answer, "well, what we need is, a new kind of open source license."

disputes over guidelines and the meaning of highly processed, outside the academic humanities context, is kind of pointless right? if you are talking about cultural influence - you can't coerce people to eat (or not eat) something in this country, so cultural influence is the main lever government can pull regarding food - the answer to everything is, "What does Ja Rule think?" (https://www.okayplayer.com/dave-chappelles-ja-rule-joke-is-h...) that is, what do celebrities say and do? And that's why we're at where we are at, the celebrities are now "running" the HHS.

There's a definition for highly processed food, it's whatever Ja Rule says it is. Are you getting it?

>Whole grain bread or infant formula are “highly processed” despite very healthy.

"processed" and "healthy" are oxymorons.

I think it's better to tell people to restrict themselves to "whole foods".