Ultra-processed food — and why Erken's kitchen matters more than ever

When Henriette Schønberg Erken wrote Stor kokebok (her "Great Cookbook") in 1914, the problem we're debating today didn't exist. Food was made from scratch because there was no alternative. A hundred years later, the alternative has become the rule — and that is exactly why her legacy has taken on new meaning.

What actually is ultra-processed food?

Ultra-processed food is most often classified using the NOVA system, developed in Brazil. In short, it refers to industrially manufactured products that contain little or no whole ingredients and are instead built from things you rarely keep in your own kitchen: flavor enhancers, emulsifiers, colorings, artificial sweeteners, isolated proteins and modified starch. The goal is usually longer shelf life and a taste and texture that make us eat more. The result is often energy-dense food loaded with salt, sugar and fat but low in fiber and nutrients. Soda, snacks, ready meals, sweet breakfast cereal and much store-bought baking are typical examples.

It's worth being precise here, because the debate deserves nuance: processing in itself is not the enemy. Fermentation, cooking and pickling are ancient techniques that make food safe and long-lasting — and ones Erken mastered down to her fingertips. Some industrially baked whole-grain breads and canned mackerel in tomato sauce technically land in the ultra-processed category, yet still have positive health effects. Norwegian health authorities have therefore been cautious about drawing an absolute equals sign between all ultra-processed food and poor health. The point is not to fear all processing, but to recognize the industrial shortcuts that crowd out real ingredients.

The numbers that make this more than opinion

This trend is not some American phenomenon we can watch from a safe distance. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Americans get on average about 55 percent of their calories from ultra-processed food — 61.9 percent among those under 18 and 53 percent among adults.

Norway is closer to that than many people think. A recent Norwegian pilot study estimates that Norwegian adults get on average around 48 percent of their energy from ultra-processed food, and an analysis of consumption patterns from 2019 found that 46.5 percent of household food spending went to such products. Norwegian eating habits are therefore in the upper tier even by European standards, and research institutes such as Nofima point out that heavily processed food now dominates the Norwegian diet.

The most striking finding, though, comes from a controlled study led by Kevin Hall at the U.S. National Institutes of Health in 2019. The participants lived on a research ward and were given two diets one after the other — one ultra-processed, one minimally processed — carefully matched so that the calories, sugar, fat and fiber on offer in each meal were the same. Even so, participants ate on average about 500 more calories per day on the ultra-processed diet, and gained weight. On the unprocessed diet they lost a corresponding amount. It's the first study to point toward the degree of processing itself — not just salt, sugar and fat — as what makes us eat more. One likely explanation: the soft, low-fiber food is eaten faster than the body's fullness signals can catch up.

Erken as the antidote

Here's the connection. Erken's recipes are the very antithesis of the modern food environment. They are built on unprocessed meat, fresh fish, root vegetables and grains — food the body recognizes. Where the modern food industry profits from us eating fast and eating a lot, Erken taught people to make food that fills you up, that keeps, and that wastes nothing.

And she did it with an eye for economy that speaks directly to our own time. She wrote whole books about using up leftovers and about preserving with little or no sugar. She cared about local, garden-grown ingredients long before anyone called it sustainability. Cooking the Erken way isn't about choosing the expensive and pretentious — it's often about choosing the cheapest and most sensible option.

One in three Norwegian consumers says they want to eat less ultra-processed food and cook more from scratch. The obstacle is rarely a lack of willingness, but a lack of know-how: how did people actually do it, back then? That is exactly the question this service is built to answer — with an answer key that has already stood the test of more than a hundred years.

Ultra-processed food is an evolving field, and the definitions are still debated. This article reports the main findings and cites its sources; it is not intended as individual dietary advice.