Consuming foods high in processing increases the chance of dying or getting dozens of harmful health disorders, according to a recent analysis of 45 meta-analyses involving over 10 million individuals.
“We discovered a consistent pattern of evidence connecting increased consumption of highly processed foods with more than 70% of the 45 distinct health outcomes we evaluated,” stated senior author Wolfgang Marx, a senior research fellow at Deakin University’s Food & Mood Centre in Geelong, Australia.
A greater consumption was defined as one serving or around 10% more ultraprocessed meals consumed daily, according to Heinz Freisling, a scientist with the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer’s nutrition and metabolism section.
According to Freisling, who was not engaged in the study, “this proportion can be regarded as ‘baseline’ and for people consuming more than this baseline, the risk might increase.”
Each study was rated by researchers as having strong or credible, extremely suggestive, suggestive, weak, or lacking evidence. According to the authors, every study included in the evaluation was completed within the last three years, and none of them received funding from businesses that manufacture ultraprocessed foods.
Lead author Dr. Melissa Lane, a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin, stated in an email that “strong evidence shows that a higher intake of ultra-processed foods was associated with approximately 50% higher risk of cardiovascular disease-related death and common mental disorders.” Heart attacks, strokes, clogged arteries, and peripheral artery disease are all considered forms of cardiovascular disease.
