The problem with "processed" food is that it's usually calorically dense and tasty, so it's easy to eat too much.
Many years ago I was obese and it was very difficult to eat less because the junk food that I was buying did not satiate me until eating too large amounts of it.
Now I can easily control my weight and I can have any weight I believe to be optimal, but that is because now I eat only food that I cook myself from raw ingredients and which satiates me in much smaller amounts and I do not feel hungry even a long time after eating.
I have verified that I have not changed and only the choice of food matters, because I have bought some of the things that I liked in the past, and after eating them I was soon hungry like in the old times, despite the big calorie content.
The food that I eat now has a relatively high content of proteins and of healthy fat, and most of the carbohydrates are from starch. I no longer use any sugar in the daily food, I make some sweets at most once per week, but usually more seldom that that.
So while someone who eats "ultraprocessed" food might see a great improvement by just eating less, I believe that it is very unlikely that anyone could succeed to do this as long as they keep eating the same food.
And even then, it's not a simple question of volume. The processed foods are addictive and play havoc with blood sugar with little satiety.
I really think they are at the heart of the obesity epidemic.
People are a lot more complicated than that, and a persons diet is anything but simple.
Solving poverty is also not very complicated when reduced down to "just have more money". That might be a useful starting point but it's worthless in practical terms.
I disagree that leading with "reduce consumption, if possible" is impractical when we're trying to address the results of calorie intake
We do lead with "Reduce consumption, if possible". The point isn't that it's impractical but rather that stopping there is woefully ineffective. We've never had more visibility into calories consumed; yet we're still seeing rising levels of obesity.
If we actually want to reduce obesity then we need to identify and address the reasons that cause people to overeat. That's what makes the reductive view of "calories in, calories out" counter-productive.
It's nontrivial to simply "eat less", I agree, but knowing that's the core goal (or more accurately, reducing caloric intake) has value when you're trying to decide how to resolve an obesity problem.
You've got to work really, really hard following this rule to still end up as a Double F.
Are you just being contrarian or do you not get the general idea?
You can name the ingredients yes? Surely you can because you've put each one in yourself.
> but I can have loads of potato chips
No, because im not convinced you know what Firming agent (calcium chloride) is.
Getting the idea of how this works?
I gave the general public the benefit of the doubt in another comment but now im not so sure.
You're massively shifting the goalpost by now requiring that I know what calcium chloride is. I do but I still don't think it makes chips better food than the daal, which includes tamarind paste, which I'm not entirely sure what it is (some kind of root?)