I do agree, but we do tend to think that UPF is a recent thing when it really isn't.
The 70s and 80s were full of UPF, mostly a hangover from the war. Proper dairy ice-cream was virtually non-existent. Dream topping, Angel delight, etc, all mass produced cheap chemical crap.
Ever since this industrial revolution, cheap food, particularly sweet stuff has had rubbish in it. It's actually far more regulated now than it was, particularly E-numbers.
Go back even earlier and unscrupulous Victorians were bleaching flour to make it whiter and putting sawdust in it to bulk it out.
I dread to think what they put in the substitute stuff my parents ate during rationing. What does it take to make powdered eggs?
In our house, we had powdered soup, custard powder, gravy granules. All highly processed.
The difference was that we ALSO had vegetables with tea every night with the exception of fish and chips Friday, always cooked from fresh, even though my mother worked full time, because despite the popular MN myth, plenty of families had both parents working. All right, she tended to boil the veg to death, but at least we had it. We might have burgers but always alongside green veg and potatoes.
It didn't matter that we ate a couple of shop bought biscuits (which have been around for about two centuries) in the evening, or had green's cheesecake mix for dessert on a Sunday, because most of our main meal food was veg, meat and potatoes. Cheap cuts, granted, but not covered in breadcrumbs and sugary marinades.
My mum was what was called a 'plain cook'. Meat and three veg. Veg was cheaper then. Ready meals were expensive things. Packet cakes were expensive things. Treats.
The good stuff has got more expensive and the crap has got cheaper. We have way more sedentary kids as well.