I grew up with a lot of ultra-processed foods and these days have found several places where I can get good quality food. I am fortunate to live in an area with a decent farmer's market "community" and some bespoke shops. Generally, I've found that mixing farmers market with ethnic markets (for meat) seems to provide significantly better quality than your average chain.
I suppose that the article hits on it a bit but a lot of the popular brands were great depression era hits. Most of us grew up on various forms of slop: hamburger helper, velveeta mac n cheese, spam, etc. The common link between everything I ate was it was easy, and allowed you to significantly stretch the meat in a dish. These days, now that we can afford more, it's most likely a matter of simplicity and brand affiliation. When you have 2/3 of an average store stuffed with ultraprocessed crap and even in the remaining 1/3 you have to be careful it's pretty easy to eat poorly. A perfect example would be "wheat" or "rye" bread which is basically the same as white bread with a little extra added. Though, these days, many even major supermarket chains offer reasonably high quality bread.
I suppose that the article hits on it a bit but a lot of the popular brands were great depression era hits. Most of us grew up on various forms of slop: hamburger helper, velveeta mac n cheese, spam, etc. The common link between everything I ate was it was easy, and allowed you to significantly stretch the meat in a dish. These days, now that we can afford more, it's most likely a matter of simplicity and brand affiliation. When you have 2/3 of an average store stuffed with ultraprocessed crap and even in the remaining 1/3 you have to be careful it's pretty easy to eat poorly. A perfect example would be "wheat" or "rye" bread which is basically the same as white bread with a little extra added. Though, these days, many even major supermarket chains offer reasonably high quality bread.