What I learned about ultra-processed foods from stuffing my face at the world’s leading food technology event

CHICAGO — “Buttery Biscuits & Hot Honey Gravy,” mushroom jerky, soy chicken nuggets, strawberry champagne donuts, plant-based frozen yogurt and buñuelos, white cheddar cheese puffs, chocolatey cookie dippers, egg-free Spanish cheesecake, plant-based chorizo-style empanadas …

I was at the annual gathering of food technologists this month to learn about, well, food technology, and I had found myself in the exhibit hall, testing how much I could eat before needing to make an emergency trip back to my hotel room.

It all started with a cookie bar. A perfect cookie bar. Crumbly like shortbread — but not sandy or dry — with crunchy pretzels and oats that were punctuated with flecks of caramel that glued the confection together but were virtually imperceptible to the eye. It was sweet but not saccharine — especially given the mini marshmallows studding its surface.

It was engineered to showcase the industrial creations — Jetpuffed White Cylinder Marbit marshmallows and Kraft Caramel Bits — from one of the world’s largest snack-food companies, Kraft Heinz.

Yes, there were booths featuring 100-liter reactors, flow wrappers, and sachet baggers, and even a robot making fried chicken. But, I realized, these ultra-processed treats were the real technology on display.

Going into the conference I knew that food companies designed their products to be hyperpalatable, that they were filled with ingredients I didn’t understand and couldn’t pronounce, and that roughly 60% of calories Americans consume these days come from so-called ultra-processed foods — industrial creations made up of ingredients you can’t find on any supermarket shelf. But I wasn’t prepared to hear about how companies were using AI to design the perfect food, or to watch as marketers outlined how today’s child-rearing techniques might impact what type of indulgent treats kids crave for snack time.

The IFT First conference, the “world’s leading food technology event” attended by some 17,000 people, demonstrated that the food industry is well aware of the health concerns about ultra-processed foods, but it is marching ahead with intentionally and strategically designing edible creations so craveable you might set aside your nutritional concerns — like I did — and begin skipping the PowerPoint presentations to try some mini chocolate lava cakes.

My bender — as deranged and delicious as it was — raised a number of tough questions. How much data about the health impact of ultra-processed foods do we need to amass before companies should be expected to start selling something healthier? Should they be praised for developing slightly healthier versions of ultra-processed foods, even if they are still ultra-processed? And when does a well-made, irresistible snack cross over from addictive in the colloquial sense to actually addictive?

“We won’t be debating the definition of ultra-processed foods,” an official of the Institute of Food Technologists, which hosted the conference, warned attendees at the start of a panel discussion closing out the first official day of the confab.

The disclaimer underscored just how rudimentary much of the understanding about ultra-processed foods is, even among experts.

While overconsumption of these foods has been tied in observational studies to type 2 diabetes, hypertension, colorectal cancer, and even anxiety and depression, scientists cannot agree on an accepted definition for an ultra-processed food, let alone a coherent theory for why they might be so harmful.

The lack of a coherent definition or understanding of these foods’ health effects has splintered the industry.

Some have rejected the concern about ultra-processing as unscientific, and part of a larger tendency to malign certain diets as causing America’s expanding waistlines.

“This is the new demon food,” said Janet Helm, a food and nutrition consultant who delivered a fireside chat during the conference. “The health benefit of a product is not solely related to the level of processing.”

Others acknowledge the growing science around ultra-processed food, but argue that the research is too rudimentary to influence corporate strategy.

“I don’t think we know what to change right now,” said Anna Rosales, the IFT official who led the panel on ultra-processed foods, in an interview following the conference.

Many companies are responding in their own capitalist way: selling slightly healthier versions of ultra-processed foods to win over customers who have read the worrisome headlines. These fears present “opportunities for growth,” a marketer for Innova Market Insights, a firm that boasts of its ability to predict food trends, assured conference attendees.

The exhibit hall overflowed with slightly healthier versions of ultra-processed classics. The plant-based frozen yogurt I ate was spiked with pea protein, and contained less sugar than your typical frozen treat thanks to the low-calorie sweetener allulose.

“For consumers of plant-based frozen desserts, ‘added protein’ is one of the top health and nutritional benefits they seek when choosing a product,” the food’s manufacturer, Ingredion, advertised.

Scientists and public health officials only have educated guesses for why ultra-processed foods are so appealing.

Some think that they trigger chemical reactions in the brain similar to those triggered by addictive drugs, or that they scramble communication between the gut and the brain, prompting people to overeat. Others will note there’s also a slew of societal and economic factors that heighten UPFs’ popularity, including low cost and wide availability, especially for people who do not have the time or resources to cook meals at home.

And then there’s the simple fact that food companies, with their teams of scientists and unlimited tools to manipulate smell, color, texture, and taste, can design a food so tailored to a person’s individual preferences that it puts the likes of celebrity chefs Thomas Keller and René Redzepi to shame.

In reality, the strawberry champagne donuts didn’t have strawberries or champagne. It was all man-made flavoring meant to precisely mimic those flavors. The biscuits and hot honey gravy featured “lipolyzed cream and ghee flavors.”

The cookie dippers, made by Cargill, contain something called “PalmAgility compound shortening,” which the company advertises as “less likely to get brittle when stored at low temperatures or greasy at high temperatures.”

The plant-based frozen yogurt I ate had maltodextrin and a “frozen dessert stabilizer system,” both of which were used to make sure that the dairy-free concoction still had the mouth-feel of cream.

It was during a talk from the “market intelligence agency” Mintel that I realized it was the texture of the Kraft cookie bar that drew me in so immediately, and prompted my binge. The caramel and pretzel bits provided an exciting bit of crunchy contrast to the otherwise soft cookie.

As the Mintel marketer continued her talk, I learned that 80% of my millennial generation reported that texture influences their snack cravings. We are more into texture, it turns out, than any other generation.

I was immediately horrified. Food companies could guess what snacks I’d like before I even popped them in my mouth. But then I started to wonder: Was adding pretzels to a cookie really that different from what I’d do in my own kitchen?

The food policy world struggles with this exact question.

Some see teams of scientists working to create the most craveable cookie as something sinister, akin to Big Tobacco fine-tuning the amount of nicotine in a cigarette, and adding menthol to make the smoke less harsh on the throat.

“Do the food companies know what is going on? Absolutely they do,” said Todd Wagner, the billionaire founder of FoodFight USA, an organization advocating against ultra-processed foods. “They know it’s addictive, they know it’s got health consequences, this is very similar to cigarettes.”

Others simply see companies like much larger versions of the home cooks who might salt and roast carrots to concentrate their flavor, or who pan-fry gnocchi before dropping them in tomato sauce to improve their texture.

“The last time I checked, anybody who makes a recipe, most of us make it because we want it to taste good,” said Rosales, the IFT official. “Even when I’m thinking of healthy food, I want those to be craveable.”

Was a snack designed in a lab really the same as one cooked in my one-bedroom apartment?

There’s no telling how many calories I consumed over the course of those two days in Chicago — let alone how much sugar and salt I subjected my body to. If I were to guess, I should probably stay away from Oreos, potato chips, and sodas for the next few months.

But I never truly felt full.

That’s the secret — and the risk — of ultra-processed foods. No matter how “indulgent,” they rarely sit in the stomach like a fibrous piece of celery. The one randomized controlled trial that tested their impact on weight gain found that subjects consumed more calories and gained more weight when they were fed ultra-processed foods than when they were fed a nutrient-matched, minimally processed diet.

“There’s dozens of hypotheses out there, and very strong opinions” on the reasons for the overconsumption and weight gain, said Kevin Hall, the National Institutes of Health researcher who directed the study.

That tendency to overeat could have something to do with the theory that ultra-processed foods mess with the body’s natural hunger hormones. Or it could be that the body digests processed foods faster than whole foods, potentially due to their low fiber content, which typically slows digestion.

By the middle of my first afternoon sampling the food industry’s wares, I did, I admit, feel a strong wave of nausea. I wondered if the 216,778-square-foot exhibit hall that had gobbled me up hours earlier was finally ready to spit me out.

But no, I was just hungry. It was time for another snack.

STAT’s coverage of chronic health issues is supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.