Scientists Fed One Group of People Ultraprocessed Foods and Another Group Whole Foods, and the Difference in What Happened to Them Was Wild

As the industrial food system pushes ultraprocessed foods to every corner of the globe, new research shows that even seemingly healthy packaged meals may fall short of the benefits offered by whole, minimally processed foods.

A fascinating new study published in Nature Medicine dove into the real-world effects ultraprocessed foods have on the human body. Following a six-month clinical trial involving 55 volunteers, researchers at the University College London found that eating minimally processed foods was not only potent fuel for weight loss, but quickly led to healthier biomedical readings across the board — a grim indictment of what's inexorably become the norm in global eating.

To run the experiment, the team of over 20 researchers split the participants into two groups, each of whic