The elimination of non-essentials.

That’s the definition for wisdom you’ll find in The Importance of Living, a book of philosophy written by Lin Yutang 86 years ago. I can only suppose you agree with that definition - and that you and I may disagree about what a wise man eliminates.

And no, this intro isn’t designed so I can badmouth leaf blowers - or even smack talk smartphones. It’s designed for you to get the lead out and get cooking.

That’s because there’s a bunch of new bad news about doing the opposite. About eating at a fast-food or even a “fine-dining” restaurant, getting a take-home supper from a convenience store, or snacking on something kept in your kitchen cabinet or refrigerator.

Granted, these ways to eat without cooking the food yourself are certainly convenient and time-saving. But when it comes to eating - an action that helps determine your present level of energy and your future degree of health - wouldn’t a wise man see convenience and time-saving as being non-essential?

Moreover, wouldn’t he realize that by not cooking you consume a slew of ultraprocessed foods?

And while UPFs have all sorts of different ways to slay you, the crux of the problem could be they’re addictive, really addictive.

Six professors recently analyzed the results of 281 studies performed in 36 countries and concluded of all types of foods “UPFs seem to be the best candidate for an addictive substance.” But if you read the rest of the paper they penned and BMJ published online on October 9, you may decide that conclusion is too mild.

The professors used the Yale Food Addiction Scale to assess those the studies and found the UPF addiction rate for adults to be 14 percent. A ratio of 1 in 7 might not seem too high until you consider this sobering (pun intended) fact.

It’s also the rate for alcohol. And it’s not too far off the addiction rate for tobacco, 1 in 5.5.

In their paper, the professors cite examples of what separates UPFs from natural or minimally processed foods. That either rarely contain high amounts of carbohydrates and fats in tandem.

While 100 grams of apple contains 59 calories and 55 of them come in the form of carbohydrates, only 1.5 calories come from fat. While 100 grams of salmon contains 73 calories of fat, it contains no calories of carbohydrates.

But a typical chocolate bar has nearly a 1-to-1 ratio of carbs to fat. One that’s 100 grams, for example, has 237 calories of carbohydrates and 266 calories of fat.

It’s chocolate, especially dark chocolate bars, as to why today’s title tells you to get the lead out. Last year, Consumer Reports tested 28 different dark chocolate bars and found that metal in all of them, as well as cadmium. In the following press release about the testing, the levels in 23 of the 28 were characterized as “so high that eating just one ounce of chocolate could be harmful.”

In all likelihood, last year’s test prompted the one Consumer Reports made public less than three weeks ago. This time, they tested 48 products containing chocolate: cocoa powder, chocolate chips, mixes for brownies and chocolate cake, hot chocolate, milk chocolate bars, and a few dark chocolate bars not included in the last year’s test.

The only positive: Although the five milk chocolate bars did contain low levels of the aforementioned metals, they did not exceed limit set by California, the limit the researchers used since the federal has none for lead or cadmium for most foods.

The overriding concern: According to the Cali law, some of the other tested products had more than twice the acceptable amount of one or the other, with 37 percent containing “levels of concern.”

Which leads us back to a general concern about many UPFs, their liberal use of added sugars and particularly fructose.

Published online on October 17 by Obesity, the paper written by Richard J. Johnson, Laura G. Sánchez, and Miguel A. Lanaspa proposes that four current theories as to the cause of the obesity epidemic - the increased ingestion of simple carbohydrates, the increased use of seed oils, the relative lack of protein, and that people simply ingest too many calories - are all correct. That what unifies the theories is theirs.

They call it “the fructose survival hypothesis.”

In short, it states that fructose ingestion blocks the use of stored fat for energy, hampers the mitochondria’s ability to produce energy, “impairs satiety,” and increases “carbohydrate-dependent hunger” as well as the “metabolic effects that result in the increased intake of energy-dense fats.”

Although moderate ingestion of the fructose naturally found in fruits and vegetables doesn’t seem to adversely affect health, the same cannot be said for when it’s transformed into high-fructose corn syrup and added to UPFs. And a 2109-USDA estimate has Americans consuming around 21 pounds of HFCS every year.

So do you really need to be a wise man to spend a good bit of time cooking? Or is it simply common sense?