HuffPost Italy has just published a commentary by Pietro Paganini on a growing and dangerous trend: blaming so-called ultra-processed foods (UPFs) for obesity and chronic disease. In the piece, Paganini explains why this narrative is misleading, unscientific, and ultimately harmful to public health.

Read the full article in Italian on HuffPost, or find the English translation below.

A U.S. judge has authorized a lawsuit against several major food producers, accusing them of contributing to obesity and cardiovascular disease through so-called ultra-processed foods (UPFs), allegedly guilty of containing “unhealthy” ingredients. It is yet another chapter in a narrative that does nothing to improve public health and obscures reality: the UPF category has no coherent scientific definition and is based largely on the number of ingredients and the degree of processing. In practice, almost everything that comes in a package falls into this category.

The supposed direct link between “processing,” ingredients, and disease simply does not exist. The hundreds of studies often cited are plagued by clear methodological limitations, weak correlations, and conclusions that do not justify causal claims.

The reason this narrative is so successful is straightforward. Anti-industry rhetoric works. It works because it offers an immediate and recognizable villain; it works because it shifts responsibility from the individual to the productive system; it works because it allows governments, media, and citizens to avoid the more uncomfortable tasks: informing, providing critical tools, preventing. It is the perfect shortcut. But reality is more complex — and certainly less convenient.

Regulated industrial food, grounded in science and produced according to high standards, is not the enemy. It is one of the pillars of modern nutrition: it guarantees safety, accessibility, consistent nutrition, reduced waste, quality standards, and innovation. It is thanks to processing that millions of people around the world can access a varied and safe diet. And it is thanks to processing that agriculture itself can exist.

In Italy, this is especially clear: 83% of agricultural production is processed by the food industry. Without processing, agriculture would collapse economically and structurally. The industry is worth €190 billion — about 10% of GDP — employs nearly 400,000 people directly and more than 1.2 million across the supply chain, and exports €67 billion. It is not a marginal sector: it is one of the two engines of national competitiveness. Industry means innovation, patents, brands, logistics, distribution — and today, digitalization.

Blaming UPFs for obesity and cardiovascular disease means ignoring what science has repeated for decades: diet accounts for roughly one-quarter of the determinants of these conditions. The rest concerns genetics, lifestyle — including physical activity, stress, and sleep — socio-economic environment, pollution, and more. But these factors do not offer an easy villain. They do not generate viral campaigns. They do not fuel dramatic court cases.

Industrial food thus becomes the perfect target. It is the dietary version of a rhetoric that pits “genuine” against “manufactured,” authentic against processed, natural against modern, an imagined simplicity against real complexity, a romanticized rural past against the supply chain that actually feeds people. It is an old narrative — historicist and Marxist in origin — now repackaged in a health-conscious frame.

If we truly want to reduce obesity and chronic disease, we should not rely on courts or on pseudoscientific categories. We must abandon the scapegoat logic and invest in education and critical understanding. We must create the conditions for citizens to make free and responsible choices, without the paternalism of “state-sponsored science.”

Public health does not improve by attacking the food industry. It improves through intelligent, evidence-based policies. It improves by restoring responsibility and informed freedom to individuals. It improves by recognizing that modernity — even in food — is an opportunity, not a threat. Science makes this clear. It is politics today that refuses to listen.

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