Ultra-processed foods: largest ever review shows many ill effects on health – how to understand the evidence
Ultra-processed foods, such as cereals and fizzy drinks, have been linked to 32 harmful health effects, according to the largest review of the evidence to date.
Globally, one in five deaths are thought to be due to poor diet, and the role of ultra-processed foods or UPFs has attracted much attention in many studies over recent years.
UPFs were first defined around 15 years ago to allow researchers to investigate the effect of food processing on health. This new study, called an “umbrella review”, analysed many recent studies, involving almost 10 million people, to bring together much of the available data to give an overall picture of how UPFs affect our health.
The results implicate the consumption of large proportions of UPFs in a diet with poor health outcomes and early death from a range of conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity and poor mental health.
Read the full article in The Conversation by clicking here.
Read the scientific review here: Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses