In recent years, eating a diet packed with highly processed foods has been linked to an increased risk of many devastating health conditions, including:
Given all that, perhaps it’s no surprise that researchers have now linked these foods to a higher risk of death as well.
Specifically, eating more highly processed foods is associated with a modest increase in death from any cause, including from heart disease- or diabetes-related complications, according to a study presented at a recent annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition.
For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 500,000 U.S. adults who were followed for a median of 23 years, starting when they were between 50 and 71 years old. Over that period, participants who consumed the most ultraprocessed foods were around 10% more likely to die than those who consumed the least such foods.
In the study, the researchers defined ultraprocessed foods according to the Nova classification system, which groups all foods into four categories:
- Unprocessed or minimally processed foods
- Processed culinary ingredients (such as oils, fats, salt and sugar)
- Processed foods
- Ultraprocessed foods
According to the ECU Health hospital system, which is affiliated with East Carolina University, examples of ultraprocessed foods in this classification system include:
- Fatty, sweet, savory or salty packaged snacks
- Cookies
- Chocolates
- Soda
- Energy or sports drinks
- Sweetened and flavored yogurts
- Packaged breads
- Pre-prepared pizza and pasta dishes
And that is just a small sampling. In fact, many of the foods Americans love to munch on can be found on the list. In a summary of the study findings, Erikka Loftfield, an investigator at the National Cancer Institute, says:
“We observed that highly processed meat and soft drinks were a couple of the subgroups of ultra-processed food most strongly associated with mortality risk and eating a diet low in these foods is already recommended for disease prevention and health promotion.”
As part of the study, the researchers accounted for other factors that raise the risk of death, including obesity and smoking. They said the increased risk of death associated with eating ultraprocessed foods was “not explained by these variables.”
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