Ultra-processed foods are cheap, convenient and wrecking your health. Plus:

• Unearthing Viking history: “They’re sexy, they bathe, they change their clothes and they have nice hair.” We'll let the expert explain.
• Kendrick's bell-bottoms: Should you copy K. Dot's Super Bowl style?

A Survivor’s Guide to Ultra-Processed Foods

The phrase “ultra-processed” made its way into academic discourse over 15 years ago, but it’s taken a while for Americans to grasp that the term encompasses far more than the junkiest grocery aisle.

In fact, it’s now estimated that up to 58% of the average American diet is comprised of ultra-processed foods, or UPFs. Many are engineered to override natural satiety signals. Most are designed to outlast the apocalypse. And there is a direct link between the rise of UPFs and the rise of obesity, metabolic disease and diet-related illness.

At this point, the question isn’t whether UPFs are bad for us. The evidence is overwhelming. The real question is what to do about it. Cutting them out entirely is unrealistic, but understanding how they shape our diets, and knowing where to make smarter swaps, can go a long way. So here’s your survivor’s guide to UPFs. Take that title literally.

Unearthing the Unexpected Corners of Viking History

Since this century began, Vikings have been the subject of countless historical documentaries, multiple streaming series and the critically acclaimed film The Northman. There’s plenty that residents of the modern world find fascinating about life in the time of the Vikings — but there’s also much about this culture that remains mysterious to us.

Enter historian Eleanor Barraclough, whose new book Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age focuses on the lived experience of people during this period — even as the book also challenges our expectations of what the “Viking Age” actually was. We spoke with her about the role of archaeology in the book, her own interest in this time and what a controversial haircut can tell us about history.

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