Though it only con-tains six ingredients, this Meati cutlet is considered an ul-tra-processed food. Processed is the new fat I n the 1970s, the U.S. government created the first wave of fat phobia, replacing flavorful, satiating fat with sugar in everything from yogurt to muffins. Of course, sugar isn’t any better for health than fats. And in trying to address heart disease, the di-etary guidelines and resulting consumer sentiment fueled an set of dietary guide-lines for Americans. Chief among their recommendations was to avoid fat. Fat, the government and its medical experts said, causes heart and other diseases. For years, CPG companies rode the Meati Percent of healthy US consumers who indicated that they aim to eat fewer processed foods Source: Purdue University, Consumer Food Insights Report, 2024 76 epidemic of obesity, diabetes and similar diseases. The lesson: Creating a nutri-tional villain simply doesn’t help any-one — and it can do serious harm. Today, this cycle is repeating itself with ultra-processed foods. Consumers are avid to avoid this “bad boy” food cate-gory, which happens to include most alt-meat products. “The problem is that the category of ultra-processed foods, which makes up about 60 percent of the American diet by some estimates, is so broad that it borders on useless,” Nicola Guess, a 6 Alt-Meat February 2025
Alt-Meat February 2025: Page 6
