I'm in between books so I'm going back to read articles I've missed. I reread "Still Processing" in the January 13th issue. It was a bit of a letdown to wade through all the research on ultra-processed foods to find that the studies showed people who ate an ultra-processed diet gained weight and had health problems, but the ones who ate a mildly processed or not processed didn't. These results don't do enough to explain the crisis of obesity in the US, Brazil, and some other countries. Ultra-processed foods are available in all of the developed countries and, because of exports of GMO and commodity foods, many of the less developed countries.
There were clues scattered through the article. A chef at the N.I.H. Clinical Center, said, "Preparing a days' worth of ultra-processed foods might take an hour. Unprocessed meals could take three or four times that long." I've found this to be true in my own life. Sometimes I'll be so hungry that I'll opt for the meal that takes the shortest time to prepare, whether it be a frozen dinner or a ramen bowl. But lately what I've done is to prepare a healthy snack so I'll have enough energy to prepare a proper meal to eat a short time later, such as a salad or a soup made from scratch.
Another clue is that we can only eat foods that are available to us, and when you're on your lunch break at Subway, you are going to grab a bag of chips and a cookie to add to your doughy sub sandwich. Plus it's hard to find a drink that is not sugary. Few people have time to prepare a lunch from home or go to a restaurant that serves healthy food.
Late in the article, the author, Dhruv Khullar, quoted an ironically named woman, Marion Nestle, who started the first food-studies program at NYU, comparing a whole-fat yogurt with a low-fat one and found the former to be less likely to lead to overeating. The "industrial" ingredients in processed foods are suspect, she pointed out.
So, lack of time, calorie density, and industrial ingredients, these are the culprits. I'm not sure we've gotten to the bottom of this and how it can be fixed. Overhauling the school lunch system is key, I think. It's run by the Dept. of Agriculture and is thought of as a dumping ground for surplus commodities. I hope I'm not sounding too much like RFK, Jr. He has some outright dangerous ideas, IMO, but there are some grains of truth behind some of them.