But of course there is! That's not the point. You could also probably produce reasonable data indicating that food starting with the letter F results in worse health outcomes. But if you then avoid fenugreek, fava beans and fiddlehead ferns, you're not making up for the fried potatoes, fried cheese and fudge sundaes which really carried the correlation!
We want causal correlations. Someone decided that instead they wanted to divide food into categoried in this specific way, and then rank categories. And I don't think all of them were naive about what they were doing. I've read Merchants of Doubt, I don't give harmful industries the benefit of doubt when it comes to things like this.
It's certainly not the food industry that decided to brand some of its own foods as Ultra-Processd and harmful for health. That kind of categorisation is the work of nutrition researchers of various kinds. The way I understand it the food industry's interests trend the opposite way, trying to convince you that everything they sell you is good for you.
We want causal correlations. Someone decided that instead they wanted to divide food into categoried in this specific way, and then rank categories. And I don't think all of them were naive about what they were doing. I've read Merchants of Doubt, I don't give harmful industries the benefit of doubt when it comes to things like this.