While the concern about "ultra-processed foods" is very valid, I am annoyed that all the articles that I have seen about this subject fail to distinguish between two very different kinds of processing:

1. Processing methods whose purpose is to separate components of the food sources. These range from simple processing like peeling and paring vegetables or filleting and boning meat, to processing that requires more complex industrial installations, like for oil extraction or for making meal/flour out of seeds or for dehydrating vegetables.

2. Processing methods that either mix multiple food ingredients or transform them in various ways, e.g. by heating or whipping.

The processing methods from the first class are both necessary and inoffensive when they are implemented carefully, to avoid modifications and contamination in the food components that are separated. For instance, for oil extraction from oily seeds or oily fruits, valid separation methods are cold pressing or extraction with supercritical carbon dioxide.

Such separation methods are necessary because they enable the cooking of food with optimal nutrient composition and because they greatly reduce the costs for the transport and storage of the food ingredients. This is why the most important of them, like seed milling and edible oil extraction, have been used for many millennia.

On the other hand, the processing methods of the second class, when done industrially instead of being done at home, are almost universally harmful and only the food products that use them are rightfully called "ultra-processed foods".

The reason why such processing methods of the second class are almost always harmful when done industrially, is the conflict of interests between the food vendor, who wants to obtain a maximum profit, and the food consumer who wants a
healthy food. These goals are not compatible.

For any vegan who is not doing hard physical work, to enable the consumption of 3000 kcal per day or more, some method for the extraction of pure proteins, either done industrially or at home, is absolutely necessary. So, for example, a protein powder is not an "ultra-processed food", unless it is mixed with undesirable additives, like sweeteners, flavors or colorants (which happens far too frequently, so a buyer must be careful to check the composition).

The easiest and the best way to avoid "ultra-processed foods" is to buy raw food ingredients and cook them at home. Using modern techniques, like cooking in a microwave oven or by using other specialized appliances, it has become possible to cook the food in a very small fraction of the time required when cooking using traditional methods.

Until some years ago, I or another family member was cooking the main dishes for an entire week during a weekend day, because that required many hours, so in the other days the food was only reheated. Now, I can afford to cook most or all of the food for a meal only immediately before eating, because that takes only about a half of hour, of which only about a half of the time is active, e.g. used for peeling/paring vegetables or washing dishes, while the rest is spent in waiting for the food to be cooked in an oven, when I can do other things meanwhile.