“Products with fewer additives and better nutritional profiles are consistently more expensive, while cheaper options are more heavily loaded with additives, sugar, and sodium. As a result, access to healthier food is constrained by price, turning basic nutrition into a privilege rather than a standard,” said Julie Chapon, Co-Founder of Yuka.
NEW FINDINGS OF a study conducted in the United States showed that food that is more affordable is likely to contain more additives and is less nutritious.
The groundbreaking study by Yuka and Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic analyzed over 800 food products. It shows that across 12 of the most common processed food categories, the cheapest options contain 2.6 times more additives, 21 percent more sugar, and 10 percent more sodium than more expensive products.
“This study highlights a two-tiered system within the American food industry,” said Julie Chapon, Co-Founder of Yuka. “Products with fewer additives and better nutritional profiles are consistently more expensive, while cheaper options are more heavily loaded with additives, sugar, and sodium. As a result, access to healthier food is constrained by price, turning basic nutrition into a privilege rather than a standard.”
The pattern is consistent across everyday staples. In store-bought bread, the cheapest loaves contain nearly four times more additives than higher-priced options. In breakfast cereals, which are products heavily marketed to children, the cheapest options contain 77 percent more sugar, with a single serving reaching more than half of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended daily limit.
When Americans shop for food, price is undeniably a decisive factor. Products withouthigh-risk additives cost, on average, 63 percentmore than those that contain them, placing healthier options beyond what many households consider affordable. With nearly 70 percent of the nation’s packaged food supply now ultra-processed, supplying more than half of adults’ daily calories and nearly two-thirds of children’s, this price discrepancy reveals a food system where affordability and health are fundamentally misaligned.
FAILING CONSUMERS
This inequality is not accidental. It is the result of a US food safety regulatory framework that is fundamentally reversed: instead of regulators imposing strict limits, food manufacturers are allowed to decide what is safe—an approach that often favors profits over public health.
“Urgent reform is needed to fix the US food regulatory system,” said Emily Broad Leib, Clinical Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School. “Weak oversight and loopholes like the GRAS designation allow substances to enter and remain in the food supply without independent safety review, even when they are restricted or banned in many of our peer countries. Protecting public health requires stronger rules, greater transparency, and a regulatory framework that prioritizes nutrition over convenience.”
The health toll is staggering. Diet-related diseases now cost the United States more than $1 trillion annually, and recent estimates suggest that about one American dies prematurely every four minutes from conditions linked to ultra-processed foods – often high in additives, sugar, and sodium.
In addition to its findings, the report includes a detailed set of policy recommendations addressing the structural weaknesses in the US regulatory system that allow potentially harmful chemical substances to remain widespread in the food supply, particularly in lower-cost and ultra-processed foods.
These recommendations pursue two complementary approaches:
• Modernizing food additive oversight through regulatory reform to strengthen accountability, close longstanding regulatory gaps, and increase transparency of the substances in food.
• Reducing exposure to additives and ultra-processed foods through schools, public institutions, and fiscal policy measures (tax incentives) that improve access to healthier options.
Founded in 2017, Yuka is an entirely independent impact project. The app lets users scan the barcodes of food and cosmetic products to assess their health impact, with the aim of bringing more transparency to product composition and empowering consumers to make better choices for their health. Today, the app has over 80 million users worldwide, including 25 million in the United States.
