One thing that is not in doubt is that many UPFs are hyper-palatable. It’s much harder to overeat if the food in question is potatoes, carrots, and fish than if the meal is Pringles, Ice cream, and deep fried fish sticks.
But what if it is lays potato chips? Potatoes fried in oil and then salted. None of the potato scrap mashing and molding that pringles have.
There is a connection between ultra processing and hyper-palatability, but it is a very lossy one. Doritos are ultra processed but no honest definition of ultra processed foods can include Fritos. Are Doritos substantially worse for you than Fritos?
Is ice cream ultra processed? There are definitely ultra processed ice creams you can buy, with lots of stabilizers or whatever. But you can also make ice cream with just cream, milk, sugar, and vanilla beans. If anything, the homemade stuff that isn't ultra processed is even more hyper-palatable than the "frozen dairy dessert" kind.
The oil used is itself ultra processed and is not a natural food or whole food. It's a lipid isolated from the original food by a series of industrial processes.
