It's not just burgers and hot dogs that count as 'ultra-processed' food Credit: Science Photo Library What on earth is UPF? Ultra-processed foods, that’s what, and this latest entry to our modern abbreviated lexicon is likely to be sticking around for a while – much like that bag of salted caramel pretzels (just one example of a UPF) on my hips. The reason is that health professionals now want us to differentiate between simply “processed” food and UPFs – foods that have been industrially altered to a high degree. Some are obvious, like a cheesy Wotsit, miraculously transformed from a grain of corn into a thumb-sized puff. But UPFs also include industrially produced bread, soy milk and other milk substitutes, breakfast cereals and baked beans.