People who eat more ultra-processed foods are at higher risk of dying early, new research suggests.
Ultra-processed foods such as crisps, instant noodles, sweetened breakfast cereals, and sausage typically have artificial colours and flavourings, and are often high in sugar, saturated fat, and salt.
The new study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, indicates that for every 10 per cent increase in the proportion of diets that were made up of ultra-processed foods, there was a 2.7 per cent rise in the risk of premature death.
The analysis included people aged 30 to 69 and spanned eight countries: Colombia and Brazil, which have relatively low levels of ultra-processed food consumption, as well as Chile and Mexico, where consumption is “intermediate,” and Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where many people eat a lot of ultra-processed foods.
“It is concerning that, while in high-income countries [ultra-processed food] consumption is already high but relatively stable for over a decade, in low and middle-income countries, the consumption has continuously increased,” Eduardo Augusto Fernandes Nilson, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil, said in a statement.
Correlation but no causal link
Independent researchers warned that the findings do not suggest that ultra-processed foods directly raise the risk of premature death, though they said these foods deserve more scrutiny.
“It is possible that the true causal risk factor is not ultra-processed foods, but a related risk factor such as better physical fitness – and ultra-processed foods is simply an innocent bystander,” Stephen Burgess, a statistician at the UK’s University of Cambridge, said in a statement.
“But, when we see these associations replicated across many countries and cultures, it raises suspicion that ultra-processed foods may be more than a bystander”.
Ultra-processed foods have been linked to health issues in the past. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer research agency found that eating more ultra-processed food is tied to a higher risk of death from heart disease, aneurysm, digestive issues, and Parkinson’s disease – but not cancer or Alzheimer’s disease.
Scientists still don’t know whether the apparent health harms linked to ultra-processed foods are due to their nutritional content or due to the industrial processing used to make them. And there is no clear definition for what ultra-processed food constitutes, which can make comparisons tricky.
Nerys Astbury, an associate professor of diet and obesity at the University of Oxford in the UK, said in a statement that nutritional guidelines should not yet be updated to warn specifically against ultra-processed foods.
“Many national dietary guidelines and recommendations already advise the reduction of consumption of energy-dense, high-fat high-sugar foods, which typically fall into the [ultra-processed foods] group,” she said.
Gabriela Galvin