How unhealthy ultra-processed foods are designed and marketed to make us crave them

Consumption of ultra-processed foods – including soft drinks, snacks and ready meals – is growing worldwide, despite evidence they are unhealthy.

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) make up about 70% of packaged food products on supermarket shelves, and even more in convenience stores.

In our new research, we explore how companies that produce these foods play on human nature to make such products seem the easiest, most rewarding and compelling option.

We show that UPFs are designed to make us crave them and eat more. They are marketed to all groups, particularly children, in a way that makes them seem the most delicious and convenient option, giving the best value-for-money, despite many health harms.

Our attraction to UPFs is no coincidence. UPF companies combine a range of tactics to drive up consumption. Many of these tactics exploit the ways we think, feel and behave.

Why we keep eating UPFs

UPFs are the most processed foods on the market. According to medical journal The Lancet, they are commercial formulations made from cheap ingredients extracted or derived from whole foods, combined with additives, but mostly containing little to no whole food in the end product.

UPFs are heavily branded and marketed, and most are produced by large international corporations.

But diets high in UPFs carry a risk of developing a wide range of serious health conditions, including excess weight or obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, chronic kidney disease and depression, as well as premature death.

Our research asked why we keep eating diets high in UPFs when we know how unhealthy they are. To answer this, we decided to zoom out and explore the system that develops, produces and markets UPFs, and investigate how human nature is caught up in it.

We reviewed a decade of published research on the food science and marketing of UPFs, and then worked with experts in these fields to create and refine system diagrams to visualise how it works.

These maps are called “causal loop diagrams”, and their power is in showing reinforcing (positive) feedback loops that drive the system towards its ultimate purpose: selling more UPFs.

We found the system is made up of many interconnected loops that capture parts of human behaviour and biology as key elements.

Products designed for maximum consumption

One feedback loop includes the use of addictive combinations of ingredients, particularly refined carbohydrates and fats. Biologically, carbohydrates (including but not limited to sugars) and fats activate different reward pathways between the gut and brain. When they are consumed together, their effects become addictive.

These ingredients can be combined in many different concentrations to hit sensory “sweet spots”. In other words, they maximise pleasure and craving responses while minimising negative responses.

Further strategies include processing methods that suppress peoples’ natural sense of being full or speed up digestion in order to give an immediate but quickly fading sense of “reward”, making us want more, sooner.

UPF marketing strategies

In terms of marketing, products are formulated to be easy and convenient to store and eat, and to appeal to our sense of getting good value.

Various promotional techniques aim to capture consumers’ attention and desire, as well as giving the illusion of healthiness. Strategies targeting children in particular employ popular culture associations with coolness or fun.

Another example of a feedback loop is how corporations collect large and complex data on our purchasing habits and our online lives, informing targeted digital marketing on social media platforms. This tends to be effective at driving purchases, providing more data to further refine these promotion strategies.

Overall we identified 11 different reinforcing feedback loops. Our research is the first study to show this web as part of the UPF system, designed to essentially trap people into buying and eating more and displacing healthier options in diets.

This product-level system also connects with feedback loops further up the supply chain in economic and financial spheres of the global UPF production.

This matters because unhealthy diets and excess body weight cause 18% of preventable premature death and disability in New Zealand. Both risk factors are linked to eating too much UPF.

Unfortunately, New Zealand hasn’t undertaken national nutrition surveys since the 2000s and we have to rely on data from similar countries such as Australia to estimate that UPFs make up about half of our energy intake.

What to do about it

Diets high in UPFs are not the result of people’s free personal choice or weak willpower, but of an intentionally designed system.

Our research shines light on how the UPF system is taking advantage, particularly of children. International experts have framed UPFs as a major global health issue, and advise strong government policy to regulate these products to counter some of these mechanisms.

Policy leadership already exists in other parts of the world, particularly in Latin America. New Zealand could follow other countries that have implemented taxes on UPFs and sugary drinks, regulations restricting advertising to children, strong front-of-pack labelling and transparency policies such as public disclosure of lobbying in government.

Complacency is not an option. The food system needs rebalancing so that it serves and nourishes people now and in the future.

The authors acknowledge the research contribution by Dr Joshua Clark.