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Ultra-Processed Foods Might Rewire Kids’ Brains To Crave Junk, Study Says
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Ultra-processed foods appear to rewire kids’ brains so they crave more junk food, a new study says. Pictures of cookies or fries trigger a powerful reaction in the brain reward systems of children who eat more ultra-processed food, researchers reported Oct. 23 in JAMA Network Open.
Those children subsequently have higher odds of weight gain and more body fat, researchers found. “Children’s brains are still developing, habits are still forming and food preferences are still being made,” senior researcher Dr. Kathleen Page, a professor of medicine and pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, said in a news release.
“It’s an important period where the brain is very sensitive to food and the food environment.”
States Move to Take Ultra-Processed Foods off the School Lunch Menu
The issue of food safety has prompted a major political realignment since the start of the second Trump administration, with the right-wing Make America Healthy Again movement forming an uneasy alliance with progressives to rid the nation’s food system of ultra-processed snacks, sweets, lunch meats and other products. Public schools are their first target.
According to tracking by Healthy Eating Research, a national nonprofit, lawmakers in at least 32 states have introduced legislation to limit or eliminate ultra-processed foods in school meals. UPFs are typically characterized by profitability, convenience and use of ingredients never found in a supermarket.
In California and Arizona, the bills have already become law. Arizona’s statute defines UPFs fairly narrowly, calling out just 11 ingredients. But California’s is very broad, including almost any food item with an ingredient created or separated in a lab — from nonnatural coloring additives to stabilizers to flavor enhancers. That could make the country’s most populous state the test case for what future students are served.
Study: Regenerative Agriculture Farms Hold Key Climate Solutions
Over the past five years, from a pole shed in South Dakota, Jonathan Lundgren has been running what is likely the most complicated real-world study of U.S. farms in history. “This is weird,” Lundgren said recently in an online interview. “This is grassroots science.”
With his 1,000 Farms Initiative, Lundgren is attempting to quantity what exactly changes in fields, pastures, and orchards when farmers decide to shift their methods toward regenerative practices. In service of that goal, he’s now deployed groups of around eight scientists to about 2,000 farms to collect 500 data types at each operation.
“The farmers were saying that they were achieving these remarkable outcomes, but we had to know whether this was real, whether this was scalable, whether this was transferable,” Lundgren said. “The only way to do that is with a huge experiment. We had to study the entire system and all of the regenerative outcomes, from carbon capture and storage to biodiversity, water, nutrition, food quality, agrichemical use, pollution, farmer wellness, and economics.”
Texas Sues Nestlé’s Gerber Over Alleged Heavy Metals in Baby Food
Texas sued baby food giant Gerber, claiming the Nestlé-owned brand deceived consumers by knowingly selling products with dangerous levels of arsenic and lead.
Attorney General Ken Paxton alleges Gerber baby food contained high levels of lead, cadmium and arsenic from 2017 to 2019. Paxton is seeking more than $10 million in penalties against the brand for allegedly violating state consumer protection law, according to the lawsuit filed in a Texas district court.
A Gerber spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the brand’s baby food meets FDA limits for heavy metals and every product is tested for more than 500 toxins and contaminants. The brand added it has long been committed to reducing levels of heavy metals, which cannot be completely eliminated from the food supply.
Ultraprocessed Food May Be Silently Damaging Your Brain’s Blood Vessels
The blood vessels feeding your brain can sustain damage without an obvious warning.
Scientists have now linked higher consumption of ultraprocessed foods to signs of that damage in middle-aged adults, raising questions about how everyday eating habits relate to the brain’s vascular health.
These changes can show up on brain scans even when someone has no noticeable symptoms. Understanding their connection to diet could help researchers investigate how food choices relate to processes associated with later stroke and dementia.
The study, published in JAMA Network Open, examined dietary questionnaires, MRI scans, body fat measurements, and cognitive assessments from 8,783 adults in Canada. Participants were aged 35 to 69 and had no established cardiovascular disease.
Do Ultra-Processed Foods Really Destroy Your Gut Lining? Here’s What the Science Actually Says
Few topics spark as much heated debate in nutrition as ultra-processed foods. While internet culture often labels them toxic, nutrition scientists are far more divided. Some researchers point to chemical additives that might irritate the gut lining, others focus on how industrial processing strips natural food structure to drive overeating, and many argue the real issue is simply hyperpalatability.
Amid this debate, a review published in Life proposed a new theory called the Three-Layer Ecosystem Disruption model, which suggests that long-term consumption of processed foods could systematically erode gut health over a lifetime. According to the authors, this hypothetical damage unfolds in three stages.
First, food additives thin the gut’s protective mucus shield and loosen the seals between intestinal cells. Second, this shifts the microbiome by wiping out beneficial, anti-inflammatory bacteria and letting harmful microbes multiply. Third, toxins leak through the compromised gut wall into the bloodstream, triggering the kind of chronic, low-grade inflammation linked to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
Nearly 1 Million Chickens Killed After Bird Flu Outbreak Hits One of America’s Biggest Egg Producers
Nearly 1 million chickens have been killed at an Illinois egg farm after a highly contagious bird flu virus was detected, marking the largest active poultry outbreak in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the bird flu outbreak affected 934,600 egg-laying chickens at a commercial facility in Clinton County, Illinois. Federal records show the infection was confirmed on October 19, 2026.
Local officials in Germantown identified the affected property as a Rose Acre Farms operation located outside the village. The loss represents a significant setback for one of America’s biggest egg suppliers. According to the Rose Acre Farms website, the family-owned company is the second-largest egg producer in the United States, operating facilities nationwide and supplying major retailers, restaurants, and food manufacturers.
The USDA confirmed that the affected flock tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly known as HPAI, a dangerous form of bird flu capable of rapidly killing domestic poultry.
