The reason we're conflating them is because there is a strong correlation between "highly processed food" and "designed recklessly". If you look at Carlos Monteiro (The pioneer in this domain) he operationalized it with the NOVA metric. NOVA 4 being the closest to what you're talking about:

"Industrially manufactured food products made up of several ingredients (formulations) including sugar, oils, fats and salt (generally in combination and in higher amounts than in processed foods) and food substances of no or rare culinary use (such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, modified starches and protein isolates)..." [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification

I highly recommend Chris van Tulleken's Ultra-processed people for a more indepth read on this fat correlation (excuse the pun :))

> You can engineer healthy food.

Sure, but these companies mostly want to engineer the cheapest shit they can legally sell. It's also valid from regular food, it's a race to the bottom, and that's why veggies/fruit are less and less nutritious over the years

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10969708/

> It matters because a lot of people can't afford the diet suggested here.

#1 economy in the world baby!!! 75% of your country is overweight or obese but somehow they can't "afford" good food

This article has a pretty good history of how the research has evolved: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/13/why-is-the-ame...

The latest conclusion seems to be that the deadly combo is ultra processed foods with high calorie density. That’s what causes us to overeat garbage. Ultra processed low calorie foods are often still junk, but not what is killing us.