Eating
ultra-processed foods like chips, sausage rolls and biscuits has been
associated with higher risk of obesity, hypertension, and cancer, but up to now
studies have not looked at whether you die any earlier.
Turns out you do. Probably.
A study in the Journal of the
American Medical Association (JAMA) shows those who ate more junk food had a
higher risk of dying earlier than those who ate less.
The risk is about 14 per cent
higher for each 10 per cent increase in the proportion of highly processed food
a person eats.
The study monitored the diets of
tens of thousands of French people between 2009 and 2017 as part of the ongoing
NutriNet-Sante study.
After seven years, 602 of the
44,551 adults had died.
The authors of the study have
cautioned the results do not mean eating a single packaged meal gives you a
higher risk of dying.
"We shouldn't be
alarmist," said Mathilde Touvier, director of the nutritional epidemiology
research team at Paris 13 University.
"It's another step in our
understanding of the link between ultra-processed food and health."
What are
ultra-processed foods?
Ultra-processed foods come under
group four of the NOVA food classification system recognized by health agencies
including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
The other three groups are
unprocessed foods like fruit and vegetables, or meat and eggs; processed
ingredients like oils, butter, sugar and salt; and processed foods like canned
fish, fruits in syrup, and certain types of cheeses and bread.
Home
delivery isn’t necessarily unhealthy, but it does make it easier to eat badly.
Ultra-processed foods include soft
drinks, packaged snacks, reconstituted meat produces, and pre-prepared frozen
dishes.
"The main purpose of
industrial ultra-processing is to create products that are ready to eat, to
drink or to heat, liable to replace both unprocessed or minimally processed
foods that are naturally ready to consume, such as fruits and nuts, milk and
water, and freshly prepared drinks, dishes, desserts and meals," according
to the Who in 2016.
"Common attributes of
ultra-processed products are hyper-palatability, sophisticated and attractive
packaging ... health claims, high profitability, and branding and ownership by
transnational corporations."
Basically, it's bright shiny junk
food. If you know, you know.
Why is
junk food unhealthy?
Linking junk food with bad health
isn't exactly groundbreaking, and the study itself isn't definitive.
Since it is not possible to conduct
an experiment where you cram junk food into people for several years,
observational studies are the only option. Since they rely on people accurately
reporting what they ate, they are inevitably flawed.
The authors also had to adjust the
results to isolate junk food from all the other causes of an earlier death,
including the overall quality of the diet, or the amount of exercise - factors
that are associated with eating more junk food.
In any case, assuming there is a
modest link between junk food and a heightened risk of dying early, the
question becomes why is junk food so unhealthy?
The JAMA report offers several
hypotheses:
- High salt content. Consuming more
sodium has been associated with heart disease and stomach cancer
- More sugar. High sugar intake has
thas been associated with an increased risk of heart disease
- Not enough fiber. Dietary fiber has
been linked with a substantially decreased risk of dying early
- Suspected carcinogen-contaminants,
such as acrylamide, in foods that have undergone high-temperature
processing
- Food additives such as titanium
dioxide have been associated with gut and intestinal inflammation
- Harmful chemicals present in food
packaging may be migrating into food
Whatever the causes, what's not in
doubt is that people in lower socioeconomic groups eat more junk.
"These results underline the
social inequalities associated with food choices," the authors write in
the JAMA report.
"Further prospective studies
are needed to confirm these findings and to disentangle the various mechanisms
by which ultra-processed foods may affect health."
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