Ultra-processed food rules: what changed in 2025 and 2026

The US still has no official definition of ultra-processed food. A first federal one went to the White House for final review on August 10, 2026, and as of November 15, 2026 its text hasn’t been published. Meanwhile the 2026 Dietary Guidelines tell everyone to avoid highly processed salty and sweet food, and California has written its own definition to take the worst of it out of school meals.

People hear “ultra-processed” in the news every week and assume there’s a rule behind it, with a list of banned foods somewhere. There isn’t one yet. Others hear “ban” and think their groceries are about to change. Nothing on a supermarket shelf has to change because of any of these rules today.

Right now the rules are a bit like a sign that says “drive slowly” with no number on it. Everyone agrees on the direction, and nobody has written down the limit.

The timeline

The federal definition

In July 2025 the FDA and USDA published a request for information to help “develop a uniform definition of ultra-processed foods”. They extended the comment period once, and it closed on October 23, 2025. On August 10, 2026, HHS announced it had “submitted for final review the federal government’s first proposed definition of ultra-processed foods”. The announcement didn’t say what the definition would be.

A law firm that follows food rules wrote on October 13, 2026 that the agencies call it a “white paper”, not a regulation, and that its text still hadn’t been released. HHS framed the goal as “a stronger foundation for future nutrition research”. We searched the Federal Register on November 15, 2026, and the newest item mentioning ultra-processed food was a May 2026 rule on what SNAP stores have to stock, with no definition.

For now, studies and surveys in the US use NOVA, and so does this site. Has the FDA defined ultra-processed food? has the short version.

The 2026 Dietary Guidelines

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025 to 2030, came out in January 2026. On page 4 they say to “avoid highly processed packaged, prepared, ready-to-eat, or other foods that are salty or sweet, such as chips, cookies, and candy”, and to “limit foods and beverages that include artificial flavors, petroleum-based dyes, artificial preservatives, and low-calorie non-nutritive sweeteners”. They also say one meal should have no more than 10 grams of added sugar. On page 9 they tell vegetarians and vegans to “significantly limit highly processed vegan or vegetarian foods”.

They don’t define “highly processed”, and they set no share of your calories to stay under. That’s why this site uses meals.guide’s plate line, no more than 30% of a plate’s calories, as an everyday mark. No guideline set it. How much is too much has the numbers.

California’s school meals law

On October 8, 2025, California’s governor signed AB 1264, which his office called a “first-in-the-nation law providing a statutory definition of ultra-processed foods”. It covers school meals, not grocery stores.

The law hands the details to the state’s Department of Public Health, which has to write the rules by June 1, 2028. When it picks “ultraprocessed foods of concern”, it has to weigh whether other countries or states have banned an ingredient or put a warning on it, whether good studies link it to harms like cancer, heart disease or obesity, whether it may add to food addiction, and whether the food was made high in saturated fat, added sugar or salt. Then the dates roll out.

California’s test is narrower than NOVA’s. NOVA asks one question about the label, and puts most packaged bread in group 4. California’s list will look at particular substances and at fat, sugar and salt, so many foods in NOVA’s group 4 may never be on it. If you have kids, how much ultra-processed food do kids eat? has the swaps that work at home.

Texas warning labels

Texas went after particular ingredients. Its 2025 law, SB 25, requires a warning on food sold in Texas that contains any of 44 listed ingredients, such as artificial colors, bleached flour, BHA and BHT. The warning starts “WARNING: This product contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada, the European Union, or the United Kingdom.” It applies to labels developed or copyrighted on or after January 1, 2027.

Four food industry groups sued. On February 11, 2026, a federal court barred the state from enforcing the warning against those groups and their members while the case goes on. Some of the 44 ingredients, like the colors, are NOVA markers. Others, like bleached flour, aren’t, so the Texas label and NOVA’s group won’t line up.

The Lancet series

On November 18, 2025, The Lancet published three papers by researchers including Carlos Monteiro, who built NOVA. The first paper argued that ultra-processed food is pushing out diets built on whole food and cooking, that this makes diets worse, and that it raises the risk of chronic disease, drawing on more than 100 long-term studies, trials and lab studies. The other two set out policies, like warning labels, marketing limits and limits in schools. Other researchers point out that most of the evidence for harm comes from studies that follow people rather than test the food, which is why a 2024 review in the BMJ rated most of it low or very low quality. What the big studies found goes through that argument.

What it means for you

None of these rules changes what’s on the shelf this week. The federal definition is unpublished, the guidelines don’t define their term, California’s list doesn’t exist until 2028, and Texas’s label is on hold for the companies in the groups that sued. The label on the package in your hand already tells you the group, and the swap ladder shows the version a kitchen could make.