Worried about processed foods? Boston researchers create TrueFood website to rank 50,000 grocery store items
BOSTON - Looking to avoid highly processed food on your next trip to the supermarket? Researchers in Boston have come up with a new online database to rank 50,000 grocery store items based on how processed they are.
The website is called TrueFood and it was created by a team at Mass General Brigham. The researchers used an algorithm to analyze ingredients, nutrition facts and prices to give each product a processing score.
Ultraprocessed foods
The creators of TrueFood say highly and "ultraprocessed" foods have taken over store shelves in the last few decades. Processed foods have "additives, preservatives and high amounts of sugar, salt and unhealthy fats," the hospital says.
Ultraprocessed foods like packaged snacks, soda, sugary cereals, instant noodles and ready-to-eat meals have been linked to more than 30 health issues from diabetes to heart conditions to cancer, researchers said last year.
"When people hear about the dangers of ultra-processed foods, they ask, 'OK, what are the rules? How can we apply this knowledge?'" researcher Giulia Menichetti with Mass General Brigham said in a statement. "We are building tools to help people implement changes to their diet based on information currently available about food processing. Given the challenging task of transforming eating behaviors, we want to nudge them to eat something that is within what they currently want but a less-processed option."
Truefood compares processed foods
The TrueFood database breaks food down into several different categories like meat, mac & cheese, baby food, chocolate & candy, chips and dressings. Click on a category, and TrueFood will show you 50 randomly sampled foods sold at Target, Whole Foods and Walmart grocery stores and rank them from least processed to ultraprocessed.
The higher the score, the more processed the food is, according to the website. In the popcorn category, for example, TrueFoods gives Walmart's Great Value Yellow Popcorn a score of zero because the only ingredient is popcorn. On the other end, Smartfood Kettle Corn Flavored Popcorn, with an ingredient list that includes sugar, corn syrup and caramel color, is given a score of 95.
Looking for a less processed pizza? The Veggie Lover's Pizza at Whole Foods has a score of just 1. Red Baron French Bread Pepperoni Pizza, meanwhile, has a score of 100, per TrueFood.
"There are a lot of mixed messages about what a person should eat," Menichetti said. "Our work aims to create a sort of translator to help people look at food information in a more digestible way."