“Ultra-processed foods damage health and shorten life”
Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses (2024)
Reasons to avoid ultra-processed foods: Ultra processed foods damage health and shorten life (2024)
In a nutshell
British Medical Journal editors call for ultra-processed food to be considered analogously to tobacco
The human body is not adapted to benefit from ultra-processed food
Almost 10 million people investigated over the past three years highlight a link between eating ultra-processed food and poor health
Context
This piece is named after an editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) entitled “Reasons to avoid ultra-processed foods: Ultra processed foods damage health and shorten life” [1]. It is a commentary on a review of published literature [2] in the same edition of the journal. I’ll be commenting on both papers in this brief update.
I tend to use the terms industrially-processed and ultra-processed interchangeably. I’ve recently written about how industrially processed carbohydrates result in chronic disease and how seed oils exert their damage generally and specifically on the liver and heart.
Objective and results of the investigation
The main review [2] covered 45 large previous analyses involving almost 10 million people and looked for evidence for associations between dietary ultra-processed food and human health.
They discovered direct associations between ultra-processed foods and 32 health outcomes including death, cancer, and mental, respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and metabolic ill health.
Across all outcomes, more exposure to ultra-processed food ingredients was consistently associated with an increased risk of poor health (71% of all outcomes monitored). 54% of the associations were either convincing, highly suggestive, or suggestive:
Convincing (9%) – cardiovascular disease related death, T2D, common mental disorders
Highly suggestive evidence (16%) – all cause mortality, heart disease related death, poor sleep, wheezing, obesity, T2D
Suggestive (29%) – abdominal obesity, overweight
Why is the paper interesting?
The accompanying editorial [1] lays out why this subject is important, and in so doing leaves nothing to the reader’s imagination. Consider the following quotes.
On the subject of what ultra-processed foods actually are:
“Ultra-processed foods are not merely modified foods…they are formulations of often chemically manipulated cheap ingredients such as modified starches, sugars, oils, fats, and protein isolates, with little if any whole food added, made palatable and attractive by using combinations of flavours, colours, emulsifiers, thickeners, and other additives.”
That doesn’t sound too much like something the human body is adapted to eat and benefit from. Indeed, the editorial notes:
“No reason exists to believe that humans can fully adapt to these products.”
Given their unnatural composition and the fact that I’m probably not biologically adapted to cope with them, it’s probably fair to suppose that they’ll do me no good. The authors seem to agree:
“The body may react to them as useless or harmful, so its systems may become impaired or damaged, depending on their vulnerability and the amount of ultra-processed food consumed.”
How does the paper help me to understand health and longevity?
Just in case anyone is in doubt about the potential harm caused by ultra-processed foods, the British Medical Journal editorial provides the starkest of comparisons, tobacco. Consider the following:
“It is now time for United Nations agencies, with member states, to develop and implement a framework convention on ultra-processed foods analogous to the framework on tobacco.”
Study outline
The authors of the main paper [2] from America, Australia and France reviewed evidence from 45 large studies that examined almost 10 million human participants.
The studies reviewed were published in the past three years and none was funded by a company which produces ultra-processed food.
There is one very important thing to bear in mind. The main paper is based on observational studies and not what are known as randomized controlled human trials (RCT). When properly constructed (this is important, because improperly RCTs can be very misleading), RCTs provide the strongest evidence for the impact of things like diet and pharmaceutical drugs on human health.
I personally believe that the results of this review and the editorial commentary are worth paying attention to for the following reasons:
The findings across the 45 studies reviewed were consistent
The findings are also consistent with what I’ve discovered previously as linked above
References
Monteiro C A, Martìnez-Steele E, Cannon G. Reasons to avoid ultra-processed foods BMJ 2024; 384 :q439 doi:10.1136/bmj.q439
Lane MM, Gamage E, Du S, Ashtree DN, McGuinness AJ, Gauci S, Baker P, Lawrence M, Rebholz CM, Srour B, Touvier M, Jacka FN, O'Neil A, Segasby T, Marx W. Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses. BMJ. 2024 Feb 28;384:e077310. doi: 10.1136/bmj-2023-077310. PMID: 38418082; PMCID: PMC10899807.