A recent study has found that eating ultra-processed foods (UPFs) can lead to a higher risk of early death.
“As research into ultra-processed food gains momentum, so too does the debate,” wrote Kathryn Bradbury—a senior research fellow in the school of population health at the University of Auckland—in an editorial on the study.
Ms. Bradbury wrote the editorial in The BMJ, the peer-reviewed medical journal that published the study by an international team of researchers.
She later added that the global food system “is dominated by packaged foods that often have a poor nutritional profile,” which for the most part serves only the companies that “formulate food products from cheap raw materials into marketable, palatable, and shelf stable food products for profit.”
UPFs are defined by The BMJ as foods such as “carbonated soft drinks, confectionary, extruded snack foods, distilled alcohol (spirits), and mass produced packaged wholegrain bread.”
These UPFs are usually “high in energy, added sugar, saturated fat, and salt,” The BMJ said.
The study followed 74,563 female nurses in 11 states from 1984 to 2018 and 39,501 male health professionals from 50 states from 1986 to 2018, using a “semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire every four years with all cause mortality and cause specific mortality due to cancer, cardiovascular, and other causes (including respiratory and neurodegenerative causes).”
There were 30,188 female deaths and 18,005 male deaths documented during a median 34 and 31 years of follow-up, the study said.
Processed meats (or meat, poultry, and seafood “ready-to-eat” products), sugar and artificially sweetened drinks, desserts made with dairy, and breakfast food that has been ultra-processed, were all “associated with higher all cause mortality.”
The study “found that a higher intake of ultra-processed foods was associated with slightly higher all cause mortality, driven by causes other than cancer and cardiovascular diseases. The associations varied across subgroups of ultra-processed foods, with meat/poultry/seafood based ready-to-eat products showing particularly strong associations with mortality.”
UPFs rely on additives such as texturizers, food coloring, and flavoring formulas. Those additives can be derived from naturally occurring plant and animal sources or can be chemically synthesized, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported.
“Many different food additives have been developed over time to meet the needs of large-scale food processing,” the WHO said. “Additives are added to ensure processed food remains safe and in good condition throughout its journey from factories or industrial kitchens, to warehouses and shops, and finally to consumers. Additives are also used to modify the sensory properties of foods including taste, smell, texture and appearance.”
‘Low Nutritional Quality’
The study relied on the Brazilian Nova classifications for food processing, which define the extent to which food has been processed, ranging from minimal in group one to ultra in group four.UPFs make up 57 percent of an adult’s daily food intake, the study said, and 67 percent among youth.
“Ultra-processed foods usually disproportionately contribute added sugars, sodium, saturated fats and trans fats, and refined carbohydrates to the diet together with low fiber,” the study said. “As well as having low nutritional quality, ultra-processed foods may contain harmful substances, such as additives and contaminants formed during the processing.”
Obesity, cardiovascular disease, colorectal cancer, Type 2 diabetes, as well as depression and postmenopausal breast cancer have all been linked by “growing evidence” to UPFs, it said.
Ms. Bradbury wrote that both the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) have said alcohol and processed meat can cause cancer.
However, she said the study logically concludes “that not all ultra-processed foods need to be universally restricted and that careful deliberation is needed when considering whether to include recommendations about ultra-processed food in dietary guidelines.”
“Most dietary guidelines already implicitly emphasize the consumption of less processed foods,” she said. “In countries where affordable, mass produced packaged wholegrain products such as breads are a recommended dietary staple and a major source of fibre, adding a sweeping statement in dietary guidelines about avoiding ultra-processed foods is not helpful.”
Such sweeping statements may also give the misconception that all non-UPFs are “healthy and can be freely consumed,” which she said “is problematic” because both the IRAC and the WCRF have said that red meat consumption, though not a UPF, can lead to increased risk of bowel cancer.
Several countries have begun the process of bringing awareness to the dangers of UPFs.
These efforts “include the restriction of marketing of unhealthy foods to children and the addition of warning labels on nutritionally poor food products, taxes on sugar sweetened beverages, and bans on partially hydrogenated oils that are a source of industrial trans fat,” she said.
Ms. Bradbury encouraged greater global adoption of these strategies, as well as “more ambitious interventions and increasing safeguards to prevent policies from being influenced by multinational food companies with vested interests that do not align with public health or environmental goals.”
