Derek Thompson

should be treated as recreational substances to which we must apply aggressive tax policies, front-of-pack warning labels, marketing restrictions, and more, especially for foods marketed to children."

This is, in a way, treating ultra-processed foods as a category a little bit akin to something like, say, cigarettes.

Cigarettes, we have decades' worth of incredibly specific studies that show it clearly is

causally leads to lung disease and other maladies.

But you just told me a few minutes ago that we don't have enough government-funded science in the realm of nutrition to know basic facts about how or what ultra-processed foods at the individual food level are doing to us.

I had a previous conversation on the show where I helpfully learned that within the category of UFP, you have things like Twinkies, which I can definitely believe are bad for me, and almond milk.

which I think is probably not that bad for me.

So to what extent are we stuck a little bit at the policy level?

Because if we're honest with ourselves, we actually don't know what exactly it is we want to regulate and how.

So Julia, can you help me understand how in this regulatory regime that Kevin's describing, I, as a shopper for my family with my two-year-old daughter, would confront products in a grocery store?

Like I'm walking down the aisle and I see almond milk, I see Cheetos, I see Twinkies, right?

I can't possibly believe that almond milk

and Twinkies deserve the exact same label.

So what am I seeing as I'm walking through the grocery store and looking at what are both ultra processed foods, but almost certainly have a very different effect on me at the metabolic and biological level?

It seems like these ideas, ideas like front of pack warning labels or marketing restrictions to children, they might be good ideas.

They might be bad ideas.

They might be good ideas that just don't do very much.

Like for example, it's not entirely clear to me that calorie labels on large restaurant menus have like

significantly and immediately changed the overall trajectory of obesity in America.

It seems like we did something that is useful to people who look to calorie numbers and not as useful to people who might not look to calorie numbers.