Deli Meat Has Long Been Linked to Health Problems. Inside the Race to Make Cold Cuts Healthier.

With a slice of white American cheese and a squiggle each of Kewpie mayo and yellow mustard, there’s nothing she’d rather eat between two slices of bread. But when I remove that glistening pink pork slice from its plastic wrap, I do so with two pinched fingers, as if I were transferring something questionable. Because, in essence, I guess I am.

Even though the deli meat category is worth an estimated $217 billion globally—and projected to grow further, fueled by the demand for quick, protein-rich options—nutrition researchers have long known that cold cuts are awful for us. The World Health Organization has, since 2015, classified cured meats as a Group 1 carcinogen. Research over decades has linked a diet heavy in the food additives found in processed meat to a slew of health problems beyond cancer, too, including type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

And now a whole bunch of influencers online are decrying cold cuts as an ultra-processed food while they toss packs of lunch meat into garbage cans. Lunch meat is like rocket fuel for inflammation. Start cleaning your fridge now,” says Pete Sulack, a chiropractor and holistic influencer with 960K followers on Instagram.

There’s a #MAHA bent to all these claims, too. Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., helped to formulate.

Deli counter sales have been trending downward, according to recent data from the market analytics firm Circana. Yet at least one of America’s largest producers of cold cuts believes it can innovate its way out of worrying trends. The company is close to reaching a goal that has taken it roughly a decade to achieve: a near-complete product line of “clean” cold cuts, redesigned for the wellness age.

It’s a meat feat that goes well beyond your typical “uncured” products at the grocery store, the company says. And its team was so proud of that fact that they invited me down to their facilities to experience it for myself. THE HEADQUARTERS OF Dietz & Watson sits just north of the Delaware River in an industrialized area of northeast Philadelphia, a city that might well be called the deli meat capital of America.