Letter to Scientific American: Stop Making Ultra-Processed Food Complicated - It's Not

WISEcode applauds Scientific American and creators of the FPro processed food classification for talking about the consumer challenge to identify processing levels in our food. But the over-complexity and lack of actionable information doesn’t help consumers in their day-to-day decisions when grocery shopping.

Scientific American refers to two systems to identify processed foods.  

• The Brazilian NOVA classifies about 85% of American foods as ultra-processed (“UPF”) so we can infer that their advice is we should just stop eating American foods. Not at all helpful for Americans.  

• FPro looks at food categories in a few major retailers and concludes most categories can be grouped into levels of processing. For instance, cookies or biscuits are virtually all ultra-processed–so we should stop eating cookies–while bread is also mostly ultra-processed. But if that bread has whole wheat we can eat it (because the American Heart Association says it’s good for heart health, despite possible toxic ingredients).

By the way, Scientific American, here are the answers to the level of UPF in each of the three stores used in the FPro study:  

• Walmart - 36.4% 

• Target - 32.8% 

• Whole Foods - 9.6% 

• National Average - 29.5% 

Great, we know what’s toxic based on your data (sort of). But every food category has non UPF options, where are those? This is why “science” has lost its mantle of trust – you are not being helpful to consumers who want to eat better.

Empowering Consumers With Actionable Knowledge  

Imagine a point-of-sale consumer tool, where parents can scan a barcode and immediately know the level of processing of a food before making a personal decision of whether that food is good for their family.  

Now stop imagining, because it already exists. The WISEcode™ app identifies levels of processing of each food, quickly highlighting processing levels by immediately evaluating over 5,000 processed ingredients and levels of harm to humans. Download the app free for iOS or Google Play.