URBANA, Ill. (U.S.A.) — If your social media feed has suddenly filled with content about ultra-processed foods (UPFs), you’re far from alone. Since Health and Human Services tasked federal agencies last year with developing UPF guidelines, the buzz has been hard to miss. Yet, despite widespread attention on the topic, federal guidelines have not yet materialized and Americans are unsure how to make healthy choices for their families.
To help inform future regulations, researchers from Purdue University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign asked a sample of nearly a thousand Americans how they’d respond to six hypothetical UPF policies. Their results are published in PLOS One.
“Ultimately, policy movement depends on public buy-in. We wanted to understand what policies the public might support and why,” said study co-author Maria Kalaitzandonakes, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois.
Kalaitzandonakes and lead author Brenna Ellison of Purdue University leveraged the Gardner Food and Agricultural Policy Survey, a quarterly survey gauging consumer sentiment on important food and agriculture topics.
The survey asked 990 respondents to rate their support for two information-based policies (defining UPFs and providing dietary recommendations around UPFs); three restriction-based policies (UPF restrictions in grocery stores, schools, and food assistance programs); and one price-based policy (taxing UPFs). The researchers also categorized respondents’ demographics, political affiliation, and their pre-existing feelings about UPFs — how tasty, safe, healthy, addictive, affordable, and convenient — they are.
“When we looked across all respondents, people were very, very supportive of information-based policies,” Ellison said. “They really want that basic information, including definitions and intake recommendations. Without knowing what is or is not a UPF, it’s difficult to know how else they may want these products regulated.”
The team also saw majority support for restriction-based policies, with the highest support being in schools.
“There's definitely concern about children and the types of food they're eating, but there was also support for restricting sales in grocery stores and for SNAP recipients,” Ellison said.
The only policy that did not achieve majority support was taxation, an unsurprising result for the researchers.
“Taxes are never popular, but especially given the high food prices that people have been encountering for quite some time, the idea of additional taxes is even less popular than it probably would have been before,” Ellison said.
When the researchers looked at the factors influencing policy support, they found Democrats were more supportive of information-based policies, Republicans were more supportive of restrictions in food assistance programs, Independents/others were least supportive of restrictions in grocery stores and of taxes, and respondents across the political spectrum were equally supportive of restricting UPFs at schools.
Pre-existing attitudes respondents had about UPFs were even more telling.
For example, if people thought UPFs were unsafe or addictive, they were more likely to support most restrictions. If they thought UPFs were unhealthy, then they were especially supportive of restrictions at schools. And people who thought that ultra-processed foods were more tasty were less likely to support restrictions, especially at grocery stores.
“There are some interesting nuances there,” Kalaitzandonakes said. “I think this matters because, ultimately, if you are a decisionmaker at the federal or state level, getting buy-in from your constituents is going to be important.”
She added that decisionmakers should keep in mind that restricting UPFs in schools won’t come without cost. Changes could mean reforms to kitchen equipment, staffing, produce supply chains, and more.
“If a school is not equipped to do a lot of scratch cooking, they’ll need support to transition that way.”
The study adds to a growing effort by academic and public health organizations to provide insights and guidance on UPFs.
“I think it's really exciting to see Americans across the country having conversations about the foods that they're eating and food policy,” she said. “They want the foods they're eating to be good for them.”
The study, “The politics of processed foods: Consumer perceptions of policies targeting ultra-processed foods,” is published in PLOS One [DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0350271].
Research in the College of ACES is made possible in part by Hatch funding from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. This research was also supported by funding from the Gardner Agricultural Policy Program at the University of Illinois and internal start-up funds from the College of Agriculture at Purdue University. Timely insights and results are often shared via ACES’ farmdoc daily outreach efforts.