Consuming large amounts of ultra-processed food (UPF) increases the risk of an early death, according to a international study that has reignited calls for a crackdown on UPF.
Each 10% extra intake of UPF, such as bread, cakes and ready meals, increases someone’s risk of dying before they reach 75 by 3%, according to research in countries including the US and England.
UPF is so damaging to health that it is implicated in as many as one in seven of all premature deaths that occur in some countries, according to a paper in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
They are associated with 124,107 early deaths in the US a year and 17,781 deaths every year in England, the review of dietary and mortality data from eight countries found.
We’ve been doing that for years, and the result on public health has been fad diets and “superfoods”. Focusing on ultra processed foods specifically calls out the obvious problem - we were significantly healthier before these foods were invented, and are less healthy after. The categories for processed-ness are necessarily arbitrary, since we have to decide what constitutes “processed”, and so sometimes relatively healthier food ends up appearing “worse” than less healthy food. But the end result is the headline above, which can be pointed to the hundred billion times it must be pointed to, in order to convince people that they should not eat a diet consisting of Doritos, mountain dew, slim jims, and ice cream.