Dr. Charles Benbrook’s lecture focused on how Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs) contribute to public health concerns in the United States. Benbrook is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics and works with the Heartland Health Research Alliance. In his talk, he addressed how the FDA and USDA should define and measure food nutritional quality, as well as the impacts of processing on nutritional quality and food safety. Drawing on three rounds of formal comments submitted to FDA/USDA by a large team from several research institutions, Benbrook outlined a science-based framework for evaluating food quality and the degree of processing, emphasizing the importance of nutrient density, food matrices, and nutrient losses that occur from farm to final product.
He explained that unhealthy UPFs are driving rates of metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and emerging problems like GI disorders and autoimmune diseases. This is supported by a rapidly expanding body of epidemiological evidence—much of it from Europe—showing clear associations between UPFs and adverse outcomes. Meanwhile, political pressure (in this case from the “Make America Healthy Again” movement) is pushing the Trump administration to address UPFs more aggressively.
Benbrook detailed a proposed metric—“NuCal”—to quantify the nutritional quality of a serving of food by comparing (1) the percentage of daily nutrient needs delivered in a serving and (2) the proportion of caloric “stomach space” a serving occupies. This metric captures in a single number how many modern foods deliver lots of calories but minimal nutrients. He stresses that phytochemicals and antioxidants, though essential, are largely missing from current labeling rules, and remain difficult to measure systematically.
He also proposed ways to classify foods based on processing-related nutrient loss, distinguishing lightly processed, processed, and ultra-processed foods using thresholds for nutrient retention and accounting for added nutrients through fortification. He argued that food processing should aim to minimize nutrient losses, reduce the need for fortification, and retain, to the full extent possible, the matrix in which nutrients are present in whole or lightly processed foods.
