People who eat a lot of highly processed foods like chips, sugary snacks, and frozen meals tend to eat more calories and gain more weight than those who eat whole foods, even when they’re not trying to.

Consumption of hyper-palatable processed foods, even at matched meal frequency, leads to adverse metabolic outcomes (e.g., elevated insulin, insulin resistance, increased adiposity) compared to whole, unprocessed foods.

Foods like cookies, chips, and sugary cereals are designed to be eaten quickly and taste super good, so people eat more before feeling full than they do with whole foods like fruits or beans.

Eating lots of ultra-processed foods is linked to having several chronic diseases at once, feeling weaker, living with less quality of life, and having long-lasting body damage — especially in older people.

Eating lots of highly processed foods like chips, sodas, and frozen meals can make you gain weight and worsen your 'bad' cholesterol compared to 'good' cholesterol—even if you eat the same number of calories as someone eating whole foods.

Even though people still ate more calories than they burned, eating high-protein, low-carb ultra-processed foods made them much less likely to store excess energy as fat compared to normal-protein ultra-processed foods.