Ultra-processed foods cause 32 health risks

Ultra-processed foods, including baked goods and packaged snacks, soft drinks, sugary cereals, and ready-to-eat or processed foods, are subjected to numerous industrial processes and often contain dyes, emulsifiers, flavors and other additives.

. These products also tend to have high in added sugar, fat and/or salt, but low in vitamins and fiber.

Many previous studies have linked highly processed foods to poor health, but no comprehensive review has yet comprehensively assessed the evidence in this area. To fill this gap, the researchers conducted a review (summarizing the evidence) of 45 different pooled meta-analyses 14 review articles that link ultra-processed foods to adverse health effects.

Within three years

All review articles were published within the last three years and included almost 10 million members. Estimates of exposure to ultra-processed foods were obtained from a combination of food frequency questionnaires, 24-hour dietary recall, and dietary history and were measured as higher versus lower intake, additional servings per day, or 10% increase.

Researchers rated the evidence as strong, highly suggestive, suggestive, weak or no evidence. They also rated the quality of the evidence as high, moderate, low or very low. Overall, the results show that Increased consumption of ultra-processed foods was consistently associated with an increased risk of 32 adverse health outcomes. The findings show that they are associated with there was an almost 50% increased risk of death associated with cardiovascular disease, a 48-53% increased risk of anxiety and common mental disorders, and a 12% increased risk of type 2 diabetes.