Welcome to The Newsfeed.

Washington State University researchers are looking into what we eat, what we buy at the grocery store, and the changing food market across the country.

In a recent study, those researchers analyzed national data and focused on ultra-processed food to understand whether some scientific findings suggests that kind of food is addictive.

We spoke with the leading WSU researcher who told us about how food companies are targeting a segment of the population to try to create lifelong customers.

Since 2024, Washington State University researchers have been analyzing consumer habits through standard data from grocery stores across the country.

Lead WSU researcher Jill McCluskey says grocery stores use a four category scale called the NOVA system.

Group one is unprocessed or minimally processed food.

Group two is processed culinary ingredients.

Group three is processed foods such as cheese, bread, and wine, and group four is ultra-processed foods like chips, hot dogs, and soda.

McCluskey says they're finding consumers who purchase ultra-processed foods don't necessarily cut back in this category as much as in others when prices rise.

-And ultra-processed is the NOVA four category, so the most processed, and we found that that has the lowest sensitivity to price of all the categories by a lot.

-McCluskey says her study aims to also learn more about how and who food companies target with their marketing and pricing.

-Food companies might want to underprice to children so that they're lifelong consumers, almost like cigarettes or drugs.

They might want to get people to start consuming them and then have them as lifetime customers.

-All this week, we're bringing you stories about food sourcing in the Pacific Northwest.

I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching The Newsfeed.