Comment by escapedmoose

You can argue the semantics all you want, but “highly processed foods”, despite the difficulty/ambiguity in defining them, tend to have both a higher calorie density and are proven to nudge people to consume more, vs. “whole foods” (i.e. minimally modified fruits, veggies, cooked whole meats, etc.). When you treat the “highly processed” label as a rule of thumb allowing for some ambiguity in the definition, and you compare people who eat processed vs. whole foods, you find that the whole foods group is overwhelmingly fitter.