This all has very big "uncured bacon" energy to me (if you didn't already know: there's no such thing; vendors of uncured bacon performatively drive the same chemical nitrite reaction using vegetable extracts). For example: yogurt becomes a UPF simply by dint of adding carrageenan, which is on the order of calling dashi a UPF because of the kombu.

It's not that there isn't a very legitimate issue underneath all this: packaged, hyperpalatable, low-nutritional-density low-satiety foods are probably a major driver of health problems. It's just that "UPF" isn't the right metric for isolating those foods, and with the wrong metrics you end up in a similar place as California does with the Prop 65 warnings.

We went through a similar thing with "pink slime" (transglutaminase preservation techniques).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-a9VDIbZCU