>Even packaged breads, including those high in nutritious whole grains, qualify as ultra-processed in many cases because of the additives and preservatives they contain.
However much I'd like to alter my diet to be more healthy, including flavored nuts or bread as ultraprocessed means I have nearly zero chance avoiding a sizable portion of what academic scientists label as ultraprocessed.
These studies and press releases seem counterproductive. If sliced bread or fancy nuts is in the same category as aerosol cheese or high calorie soda, a lot of people are going to struggle to understand what isn't ultraprocessed and give up trying to select better items at the grocery store.
it seems like a lot of your problem here is being caught off guard that pre-sliced bread, which has been modified so that it does not go stale as it otherwise would, is a processed food. try buying bread from a bakery that goes stale. after recalibrating that expectation maybe this will make more sense overall?
Oh, and I had a detective tell me once (after they'd found the guy who stole my laptop) not to worry because they had ways of making people talk. Shortly afterward I found out that detectives in that precinct had been sticking unloaded shotgun muzzles into suspects' mouths and pulling the trigger. I declined to press charges after I learned that.
of course, similar things happen pretty much everywhere else, but usually not so egregiously.