Two meals with the same calories, carbohydrates, fat, protein, water, and salt did not land the same way in the body. In a randomized trial published October 5 in Nature Metabolism, healthy-weight young adults released significantly more insulin after a 300-calorie ultraprocessed meal than after a matched meal of minimally processed foods. The work comes from Virginia Tech's Fralin Biomedical Research Institute.
The results matter because more than half of what Americans eat now comes from ultraprocessed foods. A federal CDC data brief found these foods supplied 55% of calories for people age 1 and older from August 2021 to August 2023, with children and teens at 61.9%. If processing itself changes how the body handles a meal, calorie counting alone may not tell families the whole story.
