You can engineer healthy food. The problems isn't the processing. Its that most people who are engineering food do not have "healthy" among the goals.
We're conflating "designed" with "designed recklessly".
It matters because a lot of people can't afford the diet suggested here. The messaging needs to distinguish between adding protein powder because there's no meat available, and living on Cheetos because there's no meat available, and "highly processed" fails to do that.
Sure, but these companies mostly want to engineer the cheapest shit they can legally sell. It's also valid from regular food, it's a race to the bottom, and that's why veggies/fruit are less and less nutritious over the years
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10969708/
> It matters because a lot of people can't afford the diet suggested here.
#1 economy in the world baby!!! 75% of your country is overweight or obese but somehow they can't "afford" good food