Our diet is very different from that of our great-grandparents. Today, genuine ingredients and natural foods are increasingly replaced by ready-made foods, industrially processed sauces, canned and bagged products. It’s clear that these so-called “ultra-processed” foods make life easier in the kitchen. But at what price? Nutrition experts have long warned that excessive consumption of industrially processed foods could be harmful to health, even beyond – and more than – what could be predicted by looking at their content of salt, sugars and other unhealthy substances. And a new study published in the British Medical Journal confirms the suspicions: a diet rich in ultra-processed foods, in fact, would be associated with a greater risk of developing 32 serious health problems, heart and lung disorders, tumors, and mood disorders such as anxiety and depression.
What is ultra-processed food
Ultra-processed foods are a broad and nuanced category of products, united by such high levels of industrial processing that they leave very little of the original food. Chips and snacks in bags, carbonated soft drinks and energy drinks, preserved and ready-to-use foods, are all examples of these foods, fundamentally recognizable by the long list of artificial ingredients they contain and the extreme processing of the raw materials. In countries like ours, where we love to cook and have a relatively high attention to the quality of raw materials, ultra-processed foods represent around 20-30% of the calories we ingest every day. Elsewhere, however, the percentages are much larger: in the USA, for example, they practically reach 60% of the daily calorie intake.
This is why many researchers have been studying for some time what effects a diet so different from the “natural” one can have on our health. With results that, in most cases, point in the direction of negative effects. To take stock of this relatively new and chaotic field of studies, a team of researchers from various American universities has created what in technical jargon is called a umbrella review, i.e. a study that analyzes systematic reviews and meta analyzes previously carried out on a topic. For non-experts, it may be enough to know that the result is a study that collects and synthesizes the results of other research which already represented, in turn, a compendium of the research available on a topic. And which in medicine has the highest level of reliability that one can hope to obtain in the epidemiological field.
From ultra-processed food 32 different health problems
The studies analyzed were all published within the last three years, and involved, in total, over 10 million people. As anticipated, exposure to a high quantity of processed foods was associated with 32 dangerous health conditions. In the case of cardiovascular disorders, the available data “convincingly” demonstrate a 50% increase in the risk of death for those who follow a diet rich in ultra-processed foods. The same level of certainty also emerged in the case of anxiety and other psychological disorders, the risk of which would increase by 48-53%, and diabetes, with an increase of 12%.
The relationship also emerged, albeit with a less high level of certainty, with an increase in all-cause mortality (21% higher risk), obesity, sleep disorders, and depression (22% higher risk) , asthma, gastrointestinal problems, some types of cancer, and a worsening of cardio-metabolic risk indicators.
Since these are epidemiological studies, the link that emerged between ultra-processed food and health problems cannot be considered certain. BUT as the authors of the research explain, the amount of data that is rapidly accumulating in recent years is quite convincing, and should spur governments and health institutions to act as soon as possible. “Our results support the urgent need to carry out studies on the mechanisms of this phenomenon – we read in the conclusions of the study – as well as urgent public health interventions that aim to minimize the consumption of ultra-processed foods, to improve the health of the population”.