Yuka, the wildly popular (88 million users) supermarket app for analyzing food labels for nutritional value and health impact, has produced a terrific report: Ultra-Processed Foods: Decoding a Food Transformation with Major Health Consequences.

The report

• Reviews the history of food processing
• Defines ultra-processed foods
• Reviews their health risks
• Explain how they affect health
• Describes the food system that produces them
• Explains how to identify them and make better choices

The report is beautifully illustrated, especially with examples of the marketing of ultra-processed foods and drinks to children.

The illustrations also illustrate the major concepts, ingredient extraction, in this case.

As for how to tell the difference between a processed and an ultra-processed food, try this:

The report is written clearly and covers the territory.  If you want to understand ultra-processed foods, here’s the best way to do it that I’ve seen.  High marks to the authors, Yuka’s Julie Chapon, CEO and Co-Founder Gabriela Mourad Vicenssuto.

My co-author, Lisa Sutherland, is a former vice president of Kellogg.  We had a great time writing this.

Information about the book is here.

For a 30% discount at that site, use code UCPSAVE30.

Here’s the official launch invitation

Please come to the celebration and launch for my new book, Tuesday, September 8 | 6:00–8:00 p.m. | NYU Bobst Library.  Registration and further information are here.

On this Labor Day, let’s honor the people who do the hard agricultural work that brings food to our tables.

Image from Vecteezy.

Gloria Steinem was very much a heroine of my generation.  I did not know her personally, although I met her once.  It was a memorable occasion.

Gloria Steinem, Padma Lakshmi, Ruth Reichl, and me in 2021.

This was a meeting at Gloria’s house to discuss menopause, of all things.  I could not figure out why I was invited—I’m a little late for that discussion.  It turned out that one of the women there, a donor to Gloria’s foundation apparently,  had developed a line of menopause products and wanted us to know about them.

Whatever.  I was thrilled to be there and have the chance to meet her.

We are the same generation.  We came of age at a time when women opportunities for women to work, let alone have careers, were limited.

We did cross paths.  We were at the same youth festival in Vienna in 1959.  She was funded by the CIA; I was not.  We did not meet.

But I knew about her work from early on.  I loved her account of posing as a Playboy bunny.  I could see how MS magazine provided an intellectual basis for the women’s movement.

It even provoked new thoughts about the food movement.  My all-time favorite article (I am mentioned in it) is The Feminist Food Revolution.  It asked a question I had never thought of: Why do men keep getting all the credit for the food movement?

She was a tireless advocate for better opportunities for women, and an inspiration to keep on advocating.

I wish I had known her better.

Here’s The New York Times obituary.  It’s on the top of the front page of the print copy, as well it should.

I’ve been following the Cyclospora outbreak with riveted interest because it so exemplifies what’s wrong with our food system: not enough safety effort from producers and not enough government oversight.

So here is Washington Post writer, Tamar Haspel, asking Why we should stop eating lettuce, cyclospora or not.  

“Lettuce,” she says, “makes us sick, wastes resources and has minimal nutritional value. Why are we still consuming it?”

Her arguments:

• Waste: “The Agriculture Department estimates that we waste as much lettuce as we eat. Roughly, we eat 3 billion pounds and we toss 3 billion pounds every year.
• Low nutrient value: Lettuce is mainly water. You have to eat a lot of lettuce to get nutritional value.
• Carbon emissions: “CarbonCloud estimates that lettuce’s carbon cost is 0.56 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of lettuce, a number that’s right in line with Our World in Data’s estimate of the “other vegetables” category. That means our 6 billion pounds of lettuce generate 3 billion pounds of carbon dioxide. That’s 2.7 million metric tons, more than half a million cars’ worth.”
• Land use: “The U.S. generates all that carbon dioxide by growing lettuce on 375,000 acres. (We also import lettuce.) That’s an area bigger than Cape Cod….”
• Cost/Benefit: “So, on one side of the ledger we have 1.7 million annual cases of food poisoning, $3.7 billion and 3 billion pounds of rotting lettuce. On the other we have, basically, an excuse to kid yourself into eating blue cheese dressing….”

Well, the Cyclospora outbreak has caused lots of people to follow this advice.  As food safety lawyer Bill Marler writes: Six and a Half Million Households Quit Buying Salad in a Single Month. Eighty-Two Percent Say They Will Come Back When This Is Contained. The Industry Cannot Message Its Way to Contained.

More than 6.5 million American households stopped buying salad mixes and kits in the month ending July 26, against the month before. Eighty-seven percent of produce shoppers know about the Cyclospora outbreak. More than a quarter of households say they have quit salads and fresh greens entirely and another one in ten has cut back, which Numerator puts at roughly $280 million in consumer produce spending at risk for every month this continues…Salad trips at quick-service restaurants fell more than 16 percent.

He also points to the irony: We are not substituting other vegetables for lettuce; we are eating fewer vegetables overall—at the same time the government is urging us to Eat Real Food.

As he puts it today, Shoppers Are Walking Past the Produce Aisle. Telling Them We Have the Safest Food Supply in the World Will Not Bring Them Back (check out the New Yorker cartoon, if nothing else).

Comment

So I’m not opposed to eating lettuce.  Haspel’s arguments can be made for any vegetable.  I like it in salads and sandwiches and just about anything else.  I grow it, buy it at farmers markets, and buy whole heads at grocery stores.  I just avoid bagged salads.

Here’s what I think are the real issues raised by the Cyclospora outbreak.  We need:

• Better oversight and enforcement of existing food safety rules
• Pending food safety rules (traceability!) to be implemented, despite industry lobbying.
• Vegetable growers to insist on better standards (an outbreak like this hurts all vegetable growers, not just those growing lettuce in Mexico)
• Consumers to insist on our right to safe food
• Food safety to be taken seriously—by government, industry, and eaters.

Food safety is a major, major issue in food politics.

Alas, we must now mourn the death of one of the great heroes of food politics, the honorable and immensely inspiring Wendell Berry.

His very existence was enough for hope that a decent food system might some day be possible in the United States.

When I think of his writings—his many books, essays, and poems—the words “decency” and “values” leap to mind.

He believed so deeply in the inherent worth of agrarian life—the idea that small-scale, sustainable, organic, regenerative agriculture, plant and animal, is the bedrock of a healthy, moral, and ethical life.  He lived that life.

He also believed that agrarian values are fundamental to healthy, moral, and ethical societies. 

Ethics.  Imagine that.

I was honored to meet him for the first time at his home in Port Royal, Kentucky in 2007.  I have had this photo on the wall of my NYU office ever since.

He was a constant source of inspiration.

What a loss.

I’ve collected a few memorial items recently posted.

• The obituary in the New York Times
• Berry’s 1981 Schumacher lecture: “People, Land, and Community.”
• His Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.  It ends:

MAHA has announced a big win.

A study of purchase data from states with SNAP food restriction waivers, “Short-Run Impacts of SNAP Restriction Waivers on Beverage Purchases,” finds a 13% decrease in soda purchases within the first two months, with even larger decreases in the poorest households (18.5%).  Yes, 13%, not 12% as the MAHA win poster says.

The study: Frisvold DE, Rojas FL.  Short-run impacts of SNAP restriction waivers on beverage purchases.  National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2026.  doi: 10.3386/w35613.

Background: Just published USDA data from 2023 show households participating in SNAP to consume more sugar-sweetened beverages than non-participating households.  A USDA study in 2016 showed similar results.

Attempts to restrict sodas on SNAP have been rejected by the USDA for years, but under the Trump administration, it has approved SNAP food restriction waivers for 23 states.  At the moment, 8 states have banned sugary drinks, 10 are in the process of implementing bans, and the policy in 5 states is under litigation.

Some economists have argued that SNAP participants would just use their own money to buy sugary drinks.  This study found that they did not.

According to the New York Times,

Fetch, a rewards app, found similar results in its data. Fetch users upload grocery and other receipts to receive coupons, allowing the company to track payment methods, including SNAP. In the company’s sample, SNAP households spent about 12 percent less on soda in the first three months of 2026 compared with the same period the year before. Water, coffee and juice purchases did not decline.

But some analysts say SNAP Food Restrictions May Help or Hurt—But We Will Probably Never Know.  They are particularly concerned about the lack of appropriate data sources for evaluation of the policy, and the potentially negative impacts of the policies—especially a decline in SNAP participation.

The Trump administration’s tightened rules for SNAP eligibility has already resulted in 5.6 million fewer enrollees compared with last year.

Declines in enrollment can be tracked here and here.

Comment

I’ve long supported restrictions on sugary beverages on SNAP, something intended from the time the program first started by blocked by the soda industry and retailers (the principal beneficiaries of SNAP).  But I wanted USDA waivers to come with rigorous evaluations plans that included not only purchase data, but also how participants felt about the bans and dealt with them.

The current waivers appear to me to be punitive, in line with the Trump administration’s other efforts to reduce SNAP enrollment—something it is achieving quite well.

So here’s another MAHA win: a big decline in SNAP enrollment.  They aren’t boasting about that one though, at least not publicly.

When I saw the title of this study, I thought I’ll bet the Hass Avocado people paid for this one.

Bingo.

This is a classic example of an industry-funded study producing the desired result.

• The study: LeBeau K, Segovia-Siapco G, Heskey C …  The Effect of Including 1 Avocado Daily in a Habitual Diet on the Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load in Free-Living Adults with Overweight/Obesity. Current Developments in Nutrition, 2026; 10
• Methods: This secondary analysis used data from the Habitual Diet and Avocado Trial, a multicenter, randomized, parallel-arm study involving 1008 adults with elevated waist circumference. Participants were randomly assigned to either an avocado-supplemented group, instructed to consume 1 large avocado daily with their usual diet, or a control group who maintained their habitual diet and avoided avocados.
• Results: Among 961 participants with complete data (73% females, mean age 50.5 y), the avocado-supplemented group showed a reduction in dietary GL by 13.7 points (95% confidence interval: 17.0, 10.4; P < 0.001) compared with the control. Food groups contributed similar amounts to the overall GL, except for avocado.
• Conclusions: Daily consumption of 1 avocado within the habitual diet significantly reduced GL by almost 14 points, without requiring significant dietary changes. This suggests that incorporating a single nutrient-dense food like avocado can effectively improve the GL simply and sustainably.
• Conflict of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest.
• Funding: The study was funded by the Hass Avocado Board, which had no role in data collection, data analysis, interpretation, or writing the manuscript.

Comment

This also is a classic demonstration of failure to recognize conflicted interests when they exist.  Funding research automatically generates conflicted interests, whether the authors recognize it or not, as these authors do not.  The Hass Board does not have to be involved in data collection, interpretation, or writing.  The mere fact of its funding the study trial establishes its vested interest in the outcome.