Ultra-Processed.

     There is much ballyhoo, fiddle-faddle, argle-bargle, and hugger-mugger on the web-o-sphere these days about the dangers of "ultra-processed" foods.  In general, I hold the view that most processed "foods" are merely tasty and attractively packaged metabolic poison, but there are nuances that need to be addressed.  It is certainly true that factory made junk food is carefully designed to be "hyper-palatable" so as to make sure customers keep coming back for more, but it is also the case that however much processing is undergone, the base ingredients are supremely unhealthy all by themselves. 

     And I'm not even counting the grubby panoply of chemicals that extend the shelf life and "freshness" of said foods.  The major base ingredients, wheat, corn, seed oils, and especially sugar, are bad metabolic actors all on their own.  Whatever processing and chemicals are involved in processed food manufacture, I consider them to be the lesser of the other evils.

     Unfortunately, many types of foods such as bacon, sausage, and canned meats that most would consider processed, have been tarred by that metaphorical brush.  The hard fact is that the likes of bacon, hotdogs, lunchmeat, and even SPAM are wildly healthier than almost any boxed or bagged snack in the middle of the grocery store.  They are in every way far far better for you than any bread, pasta, chip, cracker, cupcake, candy, or cookie found not only in stores, but anywhere else they might appear.  Even the most hoity-toity artisanal whole sprouted grain fifteen bucks a loaf Ezekiel bread from the groovitational corner vegan bakery is inferior to, dare I say it, SPAM, as far as your metabolic and endocrine systems are concerned.  

     Those systems doesn't give a hoot in Hades how good something tastes, what your particular "gotta have" preferences might be, or what your political and ideological preferences are.  Your endocrine system does best on primarily animal protein and fat, and anything else serves only to, slowly or rapidly, aid and abet the catastrophic epidemic of diabetes and auto-immune diseases that are devouring not only us, but also the entire medical system as it groans under the load of an increasingly sick population.