They're tasty and cheap, but they come with health risks. NPR health correspondent Maria Godoy explains how to spot and avoid ultra-processed snacks and packaged foods. This episode originally published June 20, 2023. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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Hey everybody, it's Marielle.
Next time you're at the supermarket, pick up some packaged foods and look over the ingredient list.
You'll start to notice a lot of the same things.
High levels of salt and fat, added.
Sugars, added colorings, added flavorings, hydrolyzed protein isolates, high fructose corn syrup bulking agents like maltodextrin for instance.
These are all sort of the types of ingredients you'd see in an ultra processed food.
Carrageenan.
You know, those kinds of things.
That's Maria Godoy, a health correspondent at npr.
She's been reporting on the health effects of ultra processed industrially made foods.
These are foods that are made with ingredients derived from foods and then you reassemble them to create a product that's tasty, cheap, convenient and shelf stable, which means they last a long time.
They tend to have a lot of additives like the ones we mentioned earlier.
You might find things like emulsifiers and stabilizers.
And these are ingredients used to improve the texture of the foods and make them taste better, which also can help make them harder to resist.
So we tend to overeat them.