Ultraprocessed food (UPF), health, and mechanistic uncertainty: What should we be advising the public to do about UPFs?

by Eric Robinson, Alexandra M. Johnstone

In this perspective, we discuss why current mechanistic uncertainty on ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) and health acts as a major challenge to providing informed dietary guidelines and public advice on UPFs. Based on the balance of current evidence, we do not believe it is appropriate to be advising consumers to avoid all UPFs and we await further evidence to inform consumer guidance on the need to limit consumption of specifics foods based on their degree or type of processing. Eric Robinson and colleagues discuss what advice we can give in the face of the mechanistic uncertainty of ultra-processed foods.