Diets, Rated
Twenty diets, hand-rated 1-to-10 on actual health evidence. With clear notes on what gets oversold: vegetarian mac and cheese is still mac and cheese, gluten-free brownies are still brownies, and "Italian food" is not the Mediterranean diet.
The Processing Spectrum
Not all "processed" food is the same. The NOVA classification, developed by University of São Paulo researchers, sorts food by how processed it is. Roughly 60% of US adult calories come from the ultra-processed end. For kids, it's 67%.
Unprocessed / Minimally Processed
Whole fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, milk, whole grains, beans, nuts. Looks like what came out of the ground.
~20% of US adult calories
Culinary Ingredients
Salt, oils, butter, sugar, vinegar. Used to cook and season NOVA 1 foods at home.
~3% of US adult calories
Processed Foods
NOVA 1 + NOVA 2 combinations: cheese, fresh bread, canned tomatoes, pickled vegetables, smoked fish. Still recognizable as food.
~16% of US adult calories
Ultra-Processed
Industrial formulations with additives you don't keep in your kitchen (emulsifiers, modified starches, colorings, flavor compounds). Sodas, packaged snacks, fast food, frozen meals, sweetened cereals, processed meats.
~60% of US adult calories (67% of kids')
The 2019 NIH metabolic-ward trial (Hall et al.) showed that adults on an ultra-processed diet spontaneously ate 500 more calories per day than on a matched whole-food diet containing the same calories, sugar, fat, salt, and fiber, and gained weight. Read the Hall study →
diets shown