The likes of instant noodles, fizzy drinks, mass-produced pastries and sweetened breakfast cereals have been linked to a slew of adverse health outcomes by a comprehensive umbrella study published this week by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
The study concluded that regular eaters of such ultra-processed food (UPF) were more likely to develop heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes and poor mental health. Their chances of getting fat and dying young were higher, too. UPFs are defined as being high in chemically modified substances and include processed meat (like hotdogs and sausages), candy, packaged snacks and alcoholic drinks. They are the opposite of whole foods like fresh fruit, nuts, wholegrains, vegetables and eggs.
The authors – who hailed from leading universities in Australia, the US and Europe – said their work highlighted the importance of sustained public health measures that promote reduced consumption of UPFs. They highlighted several strategies implemented by South American governments as good examples of these, including taxes on sugar-sweetened drinks and UPF bans in schools.
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The authors also acknowledged “a shift towards an increasingly ultra-processed global diet”. However, they noted large dietary discrepancies within regions and socio-economic clusters.
UPFs make up 58 percent of what people in the US eat, for example, but only 25 percent of what Italians eat and just 10 percent of what South Koreans eat.
The study utilised the Nova classification framework, which groups food into four categories based on how processed it is. Its authors described it as “the first comprehensive synthesis of current evidence derived from meta-analyses of epidemiological studies, exploring the associations between dietary exposure to ultra-processed foods and various adverse health outcomes.”
