The zeitgeist around “healthy eating” is ever-changing—and the past year brought the conversation to a tipping point. GLP-1s are everywhere you look. MAHA, or Make America Healthy Again, has entered the cultural lexicon, along with a war against ultraprocessed foods led by US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Of course, the perennial reinvention of “health” is nothing new. Despite all the buzzwords that have floated in and out of the grocery store aisles—like gluten, clean, ultraprocessed, organic, and sustainable, just to name a few—SELF firmly believes in balance and moderation. You should have your cake and eat it too. Yes, there is merit to the quest for healthier living. Who doesn’t want to feel good, inside and out? But all of that TikTok scrolling and bandwagon-jumping can leave you hungry and ill-informed, unsure about what you can and should actually do if you want to make confident choices about your health.
Our editors discussed this at length when ideating around our 2025 SELF Pantry Awards. In particular, we kept coming back to the question of ultraprocessed foods, or UPFs—a category that includes America’s favorite shelf-stable and snack items. Could we, as a health and wellness brand, recommend our readers purchase them in good faith when we know the science points toward correlations with harmful health conditions, like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and poor mental health? At the same time, could we ignore the fact that nearly 47.4 million Americans live with limited access to supermarkets and fresh food, or that, whether we’re proud of it or not, UPFs make up approximately 60% of the American diet?
As a team of mostly women, the question of convenience came up too: through personal experience, I know how easy it is to feel like a moral failure for giving my one-year-old a smoothie pouch—organic, from Whole Foods, yet technically ultraprocessed!—instead of a purée I boiled and mashed by hand. Would we be ignoring the realities of women everywhere—who largely carry the burden of mealprepping and planning—by forgoing convenient options just because they fall into the definition of UPFs?
After consulting with several registered dieticians, we landed here: Just because an item is considered ultraprocessed does not mean it is completely devoid of health benefits. In fact, it’s just the opposite—any ultraprocessed foods are healthy and convenient and delicious. That’s why this year we decided to add more rigorous criteria our winners must meet, developed with the help of a registered dietitian nutritionist and rooted in recommendations from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and US Department of Health and Human Services. Ultimately, we wanted this year’s winners to add to the conversation and help you feel good—not muddy it further.
So if you are looking to make small, everyday changes that support your health while remaining realistic about the world we live in today—not everyone has time to nurture a sourdough starter, okay?—our 2025 Pantry Awards are a great place to start.
The items we considered for the 2025 Pantry Awards had to meet the following criteria:
- 1 serving falls within the target range for saturated fat (1 to 4 g)
- 1 serving falls within the target range for sodium (115 to 460 mg)
- 1 serving falls within the target range for added sugar (2.5 to 10 g)
- Bonus points: A whole food is listed as one of the first few ingredients
