This is Day 5 of the 5-Day Healthier Eating Challenge. To start at the beginning, click here.
This week, we’ve thought a lot about our eating habits: We’ve tested our knowledge of ultraprocessed foods, examined them with our senses, made flavor-packed snacks and shopped for groceries.
Before this challenge, I would chuck food into my shopping cart without thinking. Now, I’m a dedicated label-reader who considers how a food was processed before I buy it.
I still eat ultraprocessed foods. And that’s OK. But the Dietary Guidelines for Americans states that 85 percent of our diets should be what’s called “nutrient-dense.” That refers to foods with high levels of nutrients and few added sugars, saturated fats or sodium. A diet high in nutrient-dense foods certainly can include UPFs, but experts recommend focusing on whole foods like vegetables and fruits, legumes, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, seafood, lean meats and poultry.
You may not be able to hit 85 percent right away (or ever), but you can consider today’s challenge a good first step.
Well Challenge Day 5: Add produce to your plate
Today, let’s try something you can do all year. If you regularly eat ultraprocessed foods at meals — like a packaged fruit bar at breakfast or a frozen meal at dinner — keep doing that, but add one fruit or vegetable to your plate. It could be an apple at breakfast or some broccoli at dinner.
“Then you don’t look at it as, ‘What do I have to get rid of?’” said Linda V. Van Horn, the chief of the nutrition division at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Eating meals that are well-rounded and balanced in terms of nutrients, like protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals, is more important than eliminating UPFs, said Kevin Hall, a nutrition and metabolism researcher at the National Institutes of Health. “It’s the overall profile of what’s on your plate, not each individual food, that matters most,” he said.
“Not all ultraprocessed foods are necessarily bad for you,” Dr. Hall added, and unprocessed foods aren’t all unequivocally good for you, either. “Just because Grandma made it, doesn’t make it healthy.”
So keep your chicken tenders, Dr. Hall said, but pair them with some greens. Over time, he added, incorporating produce into your meals can improve your health.
For one week, have a fruit or vegetable at one meal a day. The following week, see if you can add a fruit or vegetable to two of your daily meals, Dr. Van Horn suggested.
These behavioral changes, Dr. Van Horn said, can prompt people to keep going, because they might start to feel better or realize that they enjoy the flavors of the fresh produce.
Here are a few more things I plan to do to keep the momentum going this year:
I’m going to keep eating flavored yogurts, but will limit sodas and processed meats. Those last two items have been more clearly associated with health risks than other UPFs. Josiemer Mattei, an associate professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has found this in her research analyzing the links between ultraprocessed foods and heart health. “And that’s what the literature keeps showing over and over,” she said.
I’m going to learn more about the food I buy. During my reporting for this challenge, I used an easy-to-navigate database called TrueFood, which can help you choose less-processed options among over 50,000 grocery store items.
TrueFood analyzes the nutrition facts and ingredients lists provided by the manufacturer and suggests alternatives that are scored as less processed.
And because affordability is a factor when it comes to selecting your foods, here is a guide to eating well on a budget from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Here’s to a healthful 2025.