May 28, 2024 – It seems it's not chips that top the list of doubtless most harmful foods to our health. There are other, less obvious selections which can be sending a lot of us to an early grave.
Scientists have long highly processed foods — similar to packaged snacks — yes, even chips —, sodas and microwave meals — pose a wide range of health risks, including hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and certain varieties of cancer. They are known to contain harmful additives, colorings and emulsifiers, are high in sugar, saturated fat and salt, but lack health-promoting vitamins and fiber.
A brand new study based on 30 years of knowledge now provides surprising insights into the links between certain foods and early death. The most striking links were found for processed foods based on meat, poultry and seafood, followed by sugary drinks, dairy-based desserts and processed breakfast foods.
The issue is essential because Americans now get greater than 60% of their each day calories from ultra-processed foods, said lead creator Mingyang Song, ScD, associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition on the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
According to Song, previous studies on the subject of “highly processed foods and mortality risks” often relied on small sample sizes and short study periods, which made the outcomes less clear.
But in a single Study published in the journal The BMJ This month, Song and colleagues tracked the long-term health of greater than 74,500 male nurses from 11 states within the Nurses' Health Study, which ran from 1984 to 2018, and 39,500 male health professionals from all 50 states within the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which ran from 1986 to 2018. The study included individuals with no history of cancer, heart disease or diabetes.
Participants provided details about their health and lifestyle habits every two years and accomplished an in depth dietary questionnaire every 4 years. The research team also tested the participants' overall weight loss program quality, dividing them into groups starting from low intake of ultra-processed foods (about three servings per day) to high intake of ultra-processed foods (about seven servings per day).
In total, 48,193 deaths were recorded amongst all participants over a median statement period of 34 years, of which 13,557 were because of cancer, 11,416 because of cardiovascular diseases, 3,926 because of respiratory diseases and 6,343 because of neurodegenerative diseases.
Compared with those that ate the least ultra-processed foods, those that ate essentially the most had a 4% higher risk of death overall and a 9% higher risk of death from anything apart from cancer or heart disease, including an 8% higher risk of neurodegenerative death. However, the researchers found no significant associations with deaths from cancer, heart problems or respiratory disease.
The associations also varied across food groups, with processed meat, poultry and seafood showing the strongest and most consistent links to early death, as did sugary and artificially sweetened beverages, dairy-based desserts and highly processed breakfast foods.
At the identical time, the associations were smaller when overall weight loss program quality was taken into consideration. This may mean that an overall healthy weight loss program can partially reduce the danger related to ultra-processed foods.
“We were surprised by the rather small association between consumption of ultra-processed foods and risk of death, as several previous studies had shown a strong association,” Song said.
What does this mean?
Song and his colleagues identified that the study was observational, in order that they cannot establish a cause-and-effect relationship. In addition, the present food classification system doesn't capture the total complexity of food processing and food categories. In addition, the participants were health professionals and were predominantly white, making it difficult to generalize the outcomes to the complete U.S. population.
In one other recent study, Song and colleagues found Links between highly processed foods and depressionespecially with artificial sweeteners and artificially sweetened beverages.
Although not all highly processed foods must be banned across the board, it might be helpful to regulate your weight loss program accordingly.
Apart from the incontrovertible fact that highly processed foods are largely devoid of healthy nutrients, they often also contain additives similar to Emulsifiers and artificial sweeteners, a few of which have been shown to cause inflammation within the gut, which may result in health problems, said Fang Fang Zhang, PhD, chief of the department of dietary epidemiology and data science on the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston.
Zhang, who was not involved on this study, examined the consumption of highly processed foods amongst children within the United States and located that the consumption of those products amongst children increased dramatically in the last 2 decades and now accounts for the most important a part of the youngsters's total energy.
In one other recent study, she and her colleagues found that ultra-processed foods are sometimes cheaper relative to calories consumed than non-ultra-processed foods. Full results of the study might be presented on the 2024 American Society of Nutrition meeting in June.
Zhang said she shouldn't be sure whether it is the low price that drives people to eat highly processed foods, but slightly the convenience and accessibility of the products. Many also don't realize how bad they're for his or her health.
What else should I consider?
Song and his colleagues plan to proceed their studies to raised understand ultra-processed foods and their effects on the body. For example, certain ingredients within the foods may result in health problems that may very well be higher treated if those ingredients were identified.
To address this issue, researchers are studying biomarkers to grasp how highly processed foods affect blood metabolites (similar to amino acids and fatty acids) and the gut microbiome. Song and colleagues Earlier this month he spoke at a conference about possible metabolic pathways which link the consumption of highly processed foods with an increased risk of colon cancer.
“As we gain more insight into the mechanisms by which ultra-processed foods affect health, we need to see important health consequences to know if the mechanisms matter,” said Dr. Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition on the Gillings School of Global Public Health on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Popkin, who was not involved on this study, has researched food processing, convenience and the dietary quality of foods.
“Not only do the foods contain a lot of questionable nutrients like added sugar, sodium and saturated fat, but they also break down almost to the molecular level and are reassembled to look like food,” he said. “It's this processing, along with the high ingredients, that appears to be causing the damage.”
Popkin works on large-scale processed food regulatory efforts, including with the FDA and agencies around the globe, addressing policies similar to taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages and junk food, obesity prevention activities, and warning labels on unhealthy foods.
“We now know that using a range of additive classes provides an opportunity to create global laws that industry must adhere to,” he said. “With this knowledge, we will see countries begin to regulate ultra-processed foods.”