Real Food, Real Chewing, Real Growth

Recently, the Guardian reported on a new paper in the Milbank Quarterly that examined the public health implications of ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Considering that American adults get just over half their daily calories from them – and kids get more than 69%! – it’s definitely a question worth exploring.

What makes a food ultra-processed? A good rule of thumb is that if a product contains ingredients you’d never find in a well-stocked home kitchen, it’s ultra-processed. It’s the most remote you can get from the types of food that we humans evolved to eat.

So it’s not really surprising that the authors’ verdict on the matter was hardly a happy one. As the Guardian reported in a passage worth quoting at length,

There are similarities in the production processes of UPFs and cigarettes, and in manufacturers’ efforts to optimise the “doses” of products and how quickly they act on reward pathways in the body, according to the paper from researchers at Harvard, the University of Michigan and Duke University.

They draw on data from the fields of addiction science, nutrition and public health history to make their comparisons….

The authors suggest that marketing claims on the products, such as being “low fat” or “sugar free”, are “health washing” that can stall regulation, akin to the advertising of cigarette filters in the 1950s as protective innovations that “in practice offered little meaningful benefit”.

“Many UPFs share more characteristics with cigarettes than with minimally processed fruits or vegetables and therefore warrant regulation commensurate with the significant public health risks they pose,” they concluded.

Ultra-processed foods are also like cigarettes in that they are, first and foremost products – combinations of refined starches, industrial oils, isolated proteins, flavor enhancers, and stabilizers designed for shelf life, speed, and repeat consumption.

This distinction matters. That’s because when something is engineered mainly for convenience and tastiness, its effects go way beyond calories.

What you eat affects your body biochemically, for better or worse. Refined carbs and added sugars are absorbed quickly, triggering insulin responses that can drive inflammation and metabolic disruption over time. Some researchers have argued that these products function less like nutrient sources and more like metabolic stressors when we eat them routinely , influencing hunger signals, fat storage, and energy regulation.

Dr. David Lustig has gone so far as to argue that sugar itself should be considered a “toxin.” (All refined carbs, by the way, are digested as sugar.)

But the effects of what we eat aren’t only chemical. Some are functional.

Whole, minimally processed foods require chewing. They stimulate saliva flow. They engage the muscles of the face and jaw. They provide mechanical resistance – the kind that prompts growing bones to develop fully, which makes chewing especially crucial for children.

Facial growth responds to use. Muscles pull on bone. The tongue rests against the palate. The jaws widen in response to pressure and function. Over time, this influences not only tooth alignment but airway space and breathing patterns.

A diet composed largely of soft, ultra-processed foods changes that. The more processed the food, the softer it tends to be. The less chewing, the less stimulation there is. When this happens during key developmental years, jaw growth may not reach its full potential.

There’s a reason our distant ancestors tended to have wider jaws and much healthier teeth than we do. Diet is the biggest part of it. And the implications extend beyond structure and function.

Chewing fibrous, textured foods increases saliva flow – one of the mouth’s most powerful natural defenses. Saliva buffers acids, supports remineralization, and helps keep the oral microbiome balanced. Refined carbs, on the other hand, contribute to a more acidic environment, giving saliva an even heavier task to accomplish.

At the same time, diet shapes microbial communities beyond the mouth. The gut and oral microbiomes respond to what we eat, thriving on diversity, fiber, and whole foods. A diet of highly refined starches, added sugars, and industrial additives has been shown to throw the bacterial balance out of whack. This may be one reason why ultra-processed diets have been linked to so many systemic health problems (32 by one research team’s count).

Real food doesn’t do that. It delivers what the body needs to function as it was designed to function.