The calories that children and adolescents consumed from ultraprocessed foods jumped from 61% to 67% of total caloric intake from 1999 to 2018, according to a new study from researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University. Published August 10, 2021, in JAMA, the study analyzed dietary intake from 33,795 children and adolescents nationwide.
Tufts University. “Ultraprocessed foods now comprise 2/3 of calories in children and teen diets.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210810110955.htm (accessed August 10, 2021).
The largest spike in calories came from such ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat dishes as takeout and frozen pizza and burgers: from 2.2% to 11.2% of calories. The second largest spike in calories came from packaged sweet snacks and desserts, the consumption of which grew from 10.6% to 12.9%.
Frozen pizza and burgers? Is this a problem?
Findings In this serial cross-sectional study of nationally representative data from 33 795 US youths aged 2-19 years, the estimated percentage of total energy consumed from ultraprocessed foods increased from 61.4% to 67.0%, whereas the percentage of total energy consumed from unprocessed or minimally processed foods decreased from 28.8% to 23.5%.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2782866
We are doomed.
lifeunderwriter.net 
This is really terrible. I don’t think I ever had any processed foods until after I left home for college.
My Mother fed me Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks and hot dogs. I had to shed a lifetime of bad eating habits. I’ll be posting my fermented food list later this week. To be honest, not many foods on any fermented food list appeal to me!
I’ll be interested to see what is on the fermented food list. So far the only things that appeals to me are yogurt snd kefir.
I was surprised to hear about your childhood diet. I thought your mother was from China. I was assuming she would have cooked fresh food from scratch.
My mother was a terrible cook. But I’ll have to admit all of the food she served was homemade. We never went out or had packaged or processed stuff. Once in a great while she would buy me a TV dinner as a great treat. I remember the three compartments in the tinfoil tray. I would’ve gladly eaten them every day. The Salsberry steak was my favorite.
Mom was from China and was probably a worse cook than your Mom. I too was served the TV dinners with the three compartments and my favorite was whatever had the apple pie in the tiny middle spot. Ate a lot of frozen pot pies too. My Dad was the primary cook in the family and his meals were all fresh and homemade. So childhood meals were only half bad.