Are Additives REALLY to Blame for the Risks of Ultra Processed Foods? (You Might be SHOCKED)

In today’s episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, we’re back with Part Two of our ultra-processed foods deep dive, exploring why certain ultra-processed foods may make us eat more, even when their nutritional profiles look similar. We unpack the science behind food texture, eating speed, energy density, and satiety, including clinical trials showing how simple changes to food structure can dramatically impact calorie intake. Plus, we explore the food matrix, why whole almonds and almond butter deliver different amounts of usable energy, and whether additives and preservatives are really to blame for overeating—or if something else is going on. Here’s a run down of what we discussed in today’s episode: Can Ultra-Processed Foods Affect Health Without Extra Calories? Why Food Texture Matters More Than You Think How Slower Eating Reduced Calorie Intake by 369 Calories The Connection Between Eating Speed, Energy Density & Overeating What Is the Food Matrix & Why Does It Matter? Whole Almonds vs. Almond Butter: Why Calories Aren't Equal How Food Processing Changes Calorie Absorption The Surprising Role of Your Gut Microbiome The Real Problem With Ultra-Processed Foods How to Make Healthier Choices Without Avoiding Processed Foods 👩🏼‍💻 RESEARCH LINKS: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-03842-0 https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(25)00360-2 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916525007105 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40516651/ https://pubs.rsc.org/fo/article/7/10/4231/524424/Food-processing-and-structure-impact-the https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10232526/ #ultraprocessedfoods #processedfoods #weightloss #guthealth #nutrition #dietitian #foodscience If you’re struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NOCD can help. Book a free 15 minute call to get started at https://learn.nocd.com/BITEBACK If you or someone you love might be struggling with an eating disorder, don't wait to get help. Visit http://equip.health/biteback to learn more — DISCLAIMER:The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider. If you have heard yourself in our discussion today, and are looking for support, contact the free NEDIC helpline at 1-866-NEDIC-20 or go to eatingdisorderhope.com. — 📚 GRAB MY BOOK: The Hunger Crushing Combo Method ⤵️ Learn how to reach your healthiest weight without dieting using evidence based nutrition strategies. Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0306836793?tag=hacboogrosit-20 More purchase options: https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo/ 🎙 LISTEN TO BITE BACK WITH ABBEY SHARP ⤵️ Real conversations about nutrition, wellness, diet culture, parenting, and the biggest food debates. https://lnk.to/Bite-Back?utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social ⭐ Enjoying the podcast? Follow Bite Back on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're enjoying the show, leaving a rating or review really helps support it! ✉️ SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER https://abbeyskitchen.myflodesk.com/kd6ijl0y3e 🥞 FREE Hunger Crushing Combo™ E-Book https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo/ 💪 FREE Protein 101 Guide https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/protein-intake-recommendations/ 📖 MY FIRST COOKBOOK: The Mindful Glow Cookbook Amazon: https://amzn.to/2nev0lf 👩🏼‍💻 COACHING: 🍽️ Feeding Kids Without Diet Culture Webinar Raise confident eaters without food battles, guilt, or diet culture. https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/coaching/ 📈 Business Coaching Build and grow your online brand with proven social media and business strategies. https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/coaching/ 🤝 Personalized One-on-One Coaching Tailored support for content creation, business growth, podcasting, AI, brand partnerships, and more. https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/coaching/ 📱 FOLLOW ME @AbbeysKitchen Instagram: www.instagram.com/AbbeysKitchen TikTok: www.tiktok.com/AbbeysKitchen Facebook: www.facebook.com/AbbeysKitchen Pinterest: https://ca.pinterest.com/AbbeysKitchen 🌐 VISIT MY WEBSITE Healthy recipes, nutrition resources, parenting advice, and evidence based articles. https://www.abbeyskitchen.com 💬 If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a comment below with your thoughts and let me know what you'd like to see next! With Science & Sass, Xoxo Abbey 🌸 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:49Abbey Sharp?

  And on the slower eating UPF diet, people spontaneously ate about 369 fewer calories per day. 369. Like, that is huge, guys.

• 1:07Abbey Sharp?

  Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abby Sharp. Where I dismantle diet culture rules, call it the charlatan spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good. Today, we're jumping back into the ultra-processed food rabbit hole. If you haven't listened to part one yet, I definitely recommend starting there because we laid a lot of key mystery-solving groundwork. But as a refresher, here's the TLDR. Ultra-processed foods, or UPFs as we've been calling them, are associated with a pretty significant list of negative health outcomes. But most of that research is observational.

• 1:48Abbey Sharp?

  NOVA 4 is also a wildly heterogeneous category that can include everything from soda and packaged cookies to fortified whole-grain cereal, commercial bread, soy milk, and yogurt. The evidence that individual additives are destroying our health is a lot less convincing than social media would have you believe. And yet, when researchers actually feed people different diets in controlled experiments, something interesting keeps happening. People often eat more and sometimes fare worse with certain health measures on the ultra-processed dietary pattern. So part one essentially left us with a nutritional murder mystery of sorts.

• 2:31Abbey Sharp?

  If the UPF label itself doesn't explain everything, then what does? Is it simply that these foods tend to have worse nutritional profiles? Is it how quickly we eat them, their energy density, their texture? Does processing change the amount of energy that we can actually access from food? Does our microbiome play some kind of role? Or is there some mysterious ultra-processing effect that researchers haven't figured out yet? That is what we're getting into today. And honestly, this is the part of the conversation that I find way more interesting than arguing about whether Xanthin gum is going to kill us.

• 3:11Abbey Sharp?

  One thing we talk about a lot here on Bite Back is how misunderstood mental health conditions can be. And OCD is a perfect example. We tend to think of OCD as being super-organized or obsessed with cleanliness. But that's not what living with OCD is really about. Imagine having persistent unwanted thoughts that feel completely out of character, but so real and upsetting that you feel compelled to do something mentally or physically just to find some relief. And the good news is, there is specialized treatment. OCD is highly treatable with the right kind of specialized therapy.

• 3:56Abbey Sharp?

  It needs ERP, Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy, proven to be the most effective treatment. NOCD is the world's leading provider of OCD treatment. Covered by insurance for over 138 million Americans. Licensed therapists specialize in ERP therapy in live, face-to-face, virtual sessions with support between sessions, so you're never facing OCD alone. If you are struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NOCD can help. So book a free 15-minute call to get started at nocd.com. That's N-O-C-D.com.

• 4:41Abbey Sharp?

  All right, and really, really quickly, I would love if you would take a minute to hit that follow or subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. Leave me a little five-star review, a like, a share, a love note. Honestly, all of that helps me out so, so much. And now that we got all of our housekeeping chores done, let's get nerdy. Okay, so at the end of part one, we were talking about the UPD trial. That study was really interesting because both the predominantly minimally-processed diet and the predominantly ultra-processed diet were designed to comply with healthy eating recommendations. So in both conditions, people lost weight, but they just ate fewer calories and lost

• 5:23Abbey Sharp?

  a little bit more weight on the minimally-processed diet. So that left us all wondering. Is the main problem with UPFs simply that they're easier to overeat? Because if that were the whole story, then theoretically, if we held calories constant, the health differences should largely disappear. Well, in 2025, researchers tried to get at exactly that question. They recruited 43 healthy young men and gave each participant both an ultra-processed diet and an unprocessed diet for three weeks each, separated by a washout period. And unlike the Kevin Hall study from part one, where people could eat however much

• 6:07Abbey Sharp?

  they wanted, these participants were given a fixed amount of food. There were actually two calorie conditions. One intended to meet energy needs and another providing excess calories. But within each condition, the UPF and unprocessed diets were calorie-matched. And the researchers reported that after the UPF diet, participants had higher body weight and fat mass than after the unprocessed diet. And depending on the calorie arm, they also saw differences in LDL to HDL cholesterol ratio and a few reproductive hormone signals.

• 6:44Abbey Sharp?

  So at first glance, this sounds like pretty strong evidence that UPFs are harmful, independent of just eating too many calories. And I think this study is really important at getting us closer to the truth. But, and honestly, at this point, you should probably know that there's usually a but with me. But matching calories is not the same thing as matching diet quality. So in this case, the UPF diet contained more saturated fat, cholesterol, refined grains, and added sugar, and less fiber. So the experiment tells us that the two diets produced different outcomes, but it

• 7:25Abbey Sharp?

  still can't tell us which characteristic produced each difference. Which brings us to one factor that researchers think may play a role: texture. Okay, this is actually pretty crazy, guys. So think about a lot of the UPFs on shelves right now. As a whole, they're generally pretty easy to eat. And when I say easy, I don't just mean because they taste good, but like physically, they don't take a lot of effort to get down. So they're soft, maybe they're moist. I know we all hate that word. But maybe they're lubricated, they break up really easily in the mouth, you don't have to chew them that much. So you can kind of get in a lot of calories pretty quick.

• 8:09Abbey Sharp?

  So in a 2026 randomized crossover trial, researchers gave 41 adults two different diets for 14 days, where about 95% of the calories in both diets came from UPFs. So this was not like an apple versus pop tart situation. It was UPF versus UPF. The diets were matched for things like palatability, portion size, total calories offered, non-beverage energy density, and meal variety. The difference between the two conditions was texture. One diet contained UPFs selected to require more chewing and oral processing, which slowed down how quickly could eat them.

• 8:53Abbey Sharp?

  And the other contained softer foods that could be consumed substantially faster. And on the slower eating UPF diet, people spontaneously ate about 369 fewer calories per day. 369. Like, that is huge, guys. Same NOVA category, still overwhelmingly ultra-processed, but like a pretty big difference in intake from just changing the physical experience of eating the food. Now importantly, this was only for two weeks, so there really wasn't any major body weight differences between conditions.

• 9:34Abbey Sharp?

  So we can't say, from this trial at least, that chewing your food more guarantees weight loss. Even though it may follow that fewer calories consumed may result in weight loss over time. But I do feel it very clearly demonstrated that how food is physically structured can have a major and sustained influence on how much energy we spontaneously consume. And this is not the only study of its kind. In another 2025 study, participants were served sandwiches designed to be eaten at different speeds and containing different amounts of energy per gram. And the difference between the slow-eating, lower-energy-density condition and the fast-eating,

• 10:19Abbey Sharp?

  high-energy-dense condition was around 533 calories in a single meal. That is massive, and it gives us a plausible explanation for at least a decent part of the UPF effect. Because a lot of highly-consumed UPFs are processed into a form that can be very energy-dense, very palatable, and extremely easy to eat very quickly before our gut can tell our brain that we are full. It's literally like a triple threat to our satiety and reward systems.

• 11:00Abbey Sharp?

  So while pointing the finger at some mysterious addictive chemical and claiming that processed food hijacks your brain makes for like a really good soundbite on TikTok, the key mechanisms are probably a lot more simple. If you make something delicious, calorie-dense, and physically effortless to consume, humans are probably going to eat a lot of it. But eating speed is not the whole story. And this is where things get even nerdier. Science rules. Okay, okay, dial it in, Geek Squad, because this is my favorite part of the story. Processing doesn't just influence what happens before we swallow

• 11:42Abbey Sharp?

  the food, it also changes what happens after we swallow the food. And that brings us to something we call the food matrix.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  What truth?

• 11:53Speaker 04

  There is no spoon.

• 11:54Abbey Sharp?

  Oh, yes. My nerd is definitely showing at this point. So maybe no spoon, but the food matrix is a very real and very important part of nutrition science. You know I have spent a lot of time on this podcast calling BS on diet culture. But here's something we need to take seriously. Eating disorders are way more common than we think, and they don't always look the way we'd expect. Sometimes it's clean eating that spirals into rigid rules. Sometimes it's constant guilt around food, or that relentless voice telling you

• 12:35Abbey Sharp?

  that your body isn't good enough. Eating disorders don't discriminate by age, gender, or body size, and they deserve real treatment. And that's why I'm partnering with Equip, a virtual eating disorder treatment program that brings care right into your home. With Equip, you get a whole team: a therapist, dietitian, medical provider, and a mentor who's actually been through recovery. And as a dietitian, I love that, because recovery is about so much more than just food. Equip treats people ages 6 and up across all 50 US states with no waitlist, and most insurance plans are accepted. So if you or someone

• 13:20Abbey Sharp?

  you love might be struggling, do not wait to get help. Visit equip.health/biteback to learn more. So when we talk about a food being healthy or not, diet culture has kind of taught us to reduce that food down to a few key numbers. It has 150 calories and 5 grams of protein, 6 grams of fat, etc. And obviously, all of those things are super important. But macronutrients aren't just like free-floating molecules that get instantly absorbed when we eat like the stick of cheese or whatever. They are contained inside physical structures. So plant cell walls, protein networks, starch granules, fat globules,

• 14:02Abbey Sharp?

  and we call that whole physical architecture the food matrix. And depending on what we do to that matrix, AKA how we process it, our digestive enzymes may gain greater or lesser access to the nutrients inside. So one of my favorite ways to illustrate this is with nuts. We've got a lot of cool research on nuts, and there was a controlled crossover study, for example, where participants were given almonds to eat, but with different levels of processing. So they had whole raw almonds, whole roasted almonds, roasted chopped almonds, and almond butter, which is basically just almonds ground up into a paste. And then

• 14:45Abbey Sharp?

  they actually took a look at the participants' outputs, AKA their pee and poop, to calculate how much metabolized energy their bodies actually obtained from each form of nut. On average, whole raw almonds delivered 4.42 calories per gram, while almond butter delivered 6.53 calories per gram. That was almost 50% more measured metabolized energy per gram. Because when you eat a whole almond, some of its fat remains trapped inside the plant cell walls. So it just kind of gets pooped out without getting fully absorbed.

• 15:26Abbey Sharp?

  But when you puree almonds into a smooth paste, you rupture the cell walls, so more fat becomes available to our digestive enzymes, so then more fat and calories can get absorbed and utilized by our body. And just so people don't lose their damn mind here, that does not mean that almond butter is unhealthy. It's actually not even considered a UPF. This wasn't a UPF study. But it's a very clear demonstration that food form matters. It's also a good reminder that the calorie value on a nutrition facts label is an estimate, typically derived from using standardized energy factors. Those calculations can't

• 16:06Abbey Sharp?

  perfectly capture every effect of the food structure, or every difference between individual digestive systems. And this is where the microbiome comes into play. Because in addition to your toilet bowl, there's another place that some of the energy from food can end up: your colon. So fiber, resistant starch, and other materials that escape digestion in the small intestine can travel farther down in the GI tract, where your gut microbes ferment it. And a small but very tightly controlled feeding study gives us a really interesting window into how meaningful this can actually be. So researchers compared

• 16:48Abbey Sharp?

  a calorie-matched Western diet with a high-fiber whole-food diet specifically designed to deliver more substrate to the gut microbiome. On the high-fiber microbiome enhancer diet, participants saw greater microbial biomass, different microbial communities, more fermentation products, and an additional loss of about 116 calories per day in their stool compared to the Western diet. So the takeaway is a lot more nuanced than saying that additives in UPFs destroy your microbiome and make you fat. It's that food structure and fiber

• 17:29Abbey Sharp?

  can affect how much dietary energy becomes available to us, and food's interaction with the gut microbiome may be part of that equation. Okay, so yes, this was a lengthy two-parter here. So if you made it this far hoping for like the gotcha moment of a singular explanation, I'm quite sorry, but that is almost never how science works. But I think the bottom line is that we cannot imagine ultra-processing as one singular biological exposure with one singular mechanism. Like NOVA-4 foods typically bundle together a cluster of characteristics

• 18:12Abbey Sharp?

  that all interact to play a role in our health. Often, they're easy to eat quickly, energy-dense, low in fiber and protein, super delicious, aggressively marketed, available in big portions, and perhaps most importantly, displace whole foods that do provide more volume and hunger-crushing compounds like fiber. And then layered on top of that web of factors may be some additional effects of particular additives, processing methods, or packaging exposures that we're still trying to understand. And that is why it has been so difficult to answer this question

• 18:54Abbey Sharp?

  cleanly. Because when you compare an ultra-processed diet to a whole-food diet, you're not just changing like one thing. You're changing everything. And so I get that our busy, rule-loving brain loves a clear black-and-white rulebook where like, whole foods are good and processed foods are bad. But real life doesn't actually work like that, right? So time, money, food skills, kitchen access, mental and physical bandwidth, these are all real resources that factor into our food choices every day. And in my professional opinion, convenience has tremendous nutritional value when it helps somebody feed themselves. So here's where

• 19:39Abbey Sharp?

  I land after dedicating weeks of my life to nerding out on this. First, don't use NOVA as your personal food toxicity score. NOVA may be helpful at a population level, but it does not tell us whether an individual food is a good choice. Two, judge processed foods by what they add to your diet and life, not merely by the fact that they come in a package. Does it give you protein, fiber, macronutrients, whole grains, fruit and veggies? Does it make a meal more satisfying? Does it help you eat something balanced on a day where perhaps you otherwise wouldn't? Like, a high-fiber fortified cereal with some Greek

• 20:24Abbey Sharp?

  yogurt and frozen berries may technically be ultra-processed and still make for an incredibly nutritious breakfast. Number three, consider food structure, satiety, and the experience you have around that food. Like, you don't have to obsessively chew every bite like four dozen times, but if most of your food is being inhaled very quickly in the car or in front of a screen, slowing down and adding in more fiber, volume, protein, and foods with a more intact physical structure may make that meal more satisfying. And this

• 21:04Abbey Sharp?

  is also where my hunger-crushing Kabo method fits in beautifully. If you want chips, have the chips. But instead of mindlessly shoveling them back from the bag, put some chips on a plate with perhaps some veggies and some cheese to support more physical satiety and emotional satisfaction. Nutrition by addition, not restriction. And finally, zoom out. Honestly, this is what basically every wellness trend or

• 21:36Speaker 00

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• 23:06Abbey Sharp?

  ...missing, the big picture. There is no evidence that one yogurt containing an emulsifier is going to ruin your microbiome or give you diabetes or cause chronic inflammation. Despite what your TikTok feed might suggest, nutrition is way more nuanced than just like a red flag on a food scanning app. And if we want to really understand it for ourselves, we definitely need to get more comfortable living in the gray. But on that note, that is all that I have for you guys today. I loved this conversation so, so much. It was genuinely so fascinating to dig into this research. So I would really love it if you would give me a nice little comment or share this episode

• 23:51Abbey Sharp?

  with a friend. Also, if you want more insight into my evidence-based approach to eating well for your goals, check out the links in the show notes where you can order or purchase my bestselling book, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method. But until next time, signing off with Science and SaaS, I'm Abbey Sharp. Thanks for listening. And here's the legal language here, folks. But everything that you saw or heard in this episode is for entertainment and educational purposes only. It is never a replacement for medical advice. So I always recommend working one-on-one with a healthcare provider for your unique needs.