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.
The fuck does “ultra processed food” mean? Isnt upf defined by it harming you? Its like saying weapons harm you when weapon is the name for something that is used to harm others.
As a vegetarian, I sometimes eat a lot of meat substitutes that are highly processed.
I figure it’s a worthwhile trade.
I really like this creator and she has a number of videos on this topic if anyone is seeking more information
Kiana Docherty YouTube2 She has many videos on the topic.
Bread is UPF???
A bread with only flour, water, salt would be a processed food only as flour is processed.
A bread with 23 items listed in it’s ingredients, half of which sound like something you’d hear in chemistry class, is ultra-processed.
This is the correct answer.
Another way to distinguish the good from the bad: Good bread goes stale in a few days, it also is harder to chew. UPF bread will sit in your breadbin for 7 days without noticeable changes and is fluffy and relatively light.
The reason for the fluffiness and the shelf life is all the chemical additives.
You can see why the corporations love UPF bread - and why (if you didn’t know the health impact) you might want to buy UPF bread on your weekly shop.
Even with this information, it’s fine if it’s a small part of your diet. My kids aren’t going to die because they eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day.
Always having it available and the fact that they’ll eat it mean it’s the healthier choice.
You have to make tradeoffs. That’s just how food works and how it has always worked.
I buy my bread at the local bakery, I sure hope it’s not processed cause I like that shit
probably depends on the type of bread. sliced bread commonly sold in the uk is certainly UPF
For example, US research published last year in the BMJ found that people who consume the most UPF have a 4% higher risk of death overall and a 9% greater risk of dying from something other than cancer or heart disease.
If you don’t want to die of cancer and heart disease, UPF may be be a good choice.
The 4% greater risk of dying… Does that mean if I have a 10% chance of dying by age 70 it becomes a 14% chance or a 10.4% chance? I believe the latter. But that’s a correlation for the people who eat the most UPF. Would have to see how that’s controlled for socioeconomic class and access to healthcare.
It’ll be a delicious death. Mmhmm a cupcake death.
It’s astonishing to me that scientists are using such unscientific terms like “ultra processed food”. What is it about these foods that is unhealthy?
It’s like saying “sports are dangerous” while including football and golf in your definition.
Scientists only use terms like ultra processed food after defining them in their scientific papers. The problem here is that the media find it difficult to write a short article for the general audience if they have to define things scientifically.
What specifically is bad about UPF foods is still being researched. A few leading ideas are:
- Very little fibre
- Starches are all immediately accessible to digestion and so blood glucose spikes much more than for the non-UPF equivalent
- UPF foods are soft and dry (so weigh less) making it very easy to eat a lot very fast, so you eat too many calories.
- Relatively high in salt and sugar
- Use of emulsifiers. These may change your gut microbiota and also make your gut more leaky causing inflammation
- Use of preservatives and artificial colours
- Frequently have a lot of oil
Low fibre, emulsifiers and preservatives, while lacking variety of phytochemicals found in fresh food is known to change your gut health. People on UPF diets tend to eat more and have higher blood glucose spikes leading to heart disease and diabetes.
Altogether this is a recipe for a shorter, less healthy life
Those are shit definitions that come from pop-science not real science. They’re so broad as to be functionally useless.
I think there’s a bit of a political drive to try to label chronic conditions as “lifestyle” diseases tbh, hence the loose definitions.
I just had the same thought as I was formulating a different comment here.
There is no single definition of ultra-processed foods, but in general they contain ingredients not used in home cooking.
Many are chemicals, colourings and sweeteners, used to improve the food’s appearance, taste or texture.
Fizzy drinks, sweets and chicken nuggets are all examples. However, they can also include less obvious foods, including some breads, breakfast cereals and yoghurts.
A product containing more than five ingredients is likely to be ultra-processed, according to public health expert Prof Maira Bes-Rastrollo of the University of Navarra in Spain.
Ultra-processed foods are often high in salt, sugar and saturated fats. In the UK, look out for a “traffic light” label on the packaging.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/what_is_ultra-processed_food
Thank you for the details - as you point out this is a functionally useless definition.
It reeks of “You know what I mean - that bad stuff”. And that’s not a good scientific definition.
A product containing more than five ingredients is likely to be ultra-processed
Curry is “ultra-processed” - you heard it hear first.
Like I said - “Sports are dangerous” is a very bad way to try to categorize risky activity. Golf and football are very different as are Curry and Twizzlers.
A product containing more than five ingredients is likely to be ultra-processed
Ugh. No. That amounts to saying “anything that contains five spice is ultra-processed”. Why do you hate Chinese cuisine.
The “not used in home cooking” rule of thumb is way better though you can certainly make absolutely filthy dishes at home. Home cooking also uses “chemicals, colouring and sweeteners”, and also home cooks care about appearance, taste, and texture.
What I’d actually be interested in is comparing EU vs. US standards UPC. EU products use colourings such as red beet extract, beta-carotene, stabilisers, gelling agents etc. like guar gum or arrowroot, when they use fully synthetic stuff then it’s generally something actually found in nature. Companies add ascorbic acid as antioxidant, grandma added a splash of lemon juice, same difference really.
A EU strawberry yoghurt which says “natural aroma” is shoddy, yes, you’re getting fewer strawberries and more strawberry aroma produced by fungi, but I’m rather sceptical when it comes to claims that it’s less healthy.
In this reply you you talked about “some breads”, the OP Post only talks about bread - and that for sure had only ingredients in using at home.
Same for French fries: potato, salt, fat .
I’m with the poor downvoted fellow, I don’t understand where the risk comes from when it’s described this vague.
Are home made burgers better? Is it the freezing process and I should lower my meal prep? Is it additives?
“An ultra-processed food (UPF) is a grouping of processed food characterized by relatively involved methods of production. There is no simple definition of UPF, but they are generally understood to be an industrial creation derived from natural food or synthesized from other organic compounds.[1][2] The resulting products are designed to be highly profitable, convenient, and hyperpalatable, often through food additives such as preservatives, colourings, and flavourings.[3] UPFs have often undergone processes such as moulding/extruding, hydrogenation, or frying.[4]” Wikipedia
I don’t know why it is not defined as such. It’s easy to understand to me anyway. Flour has been ground up by humans for centuries, and has gone through a process, but the end product still at least resembles what you find in nature. Glycerides however, need to be explained and created using chemistry through indusrial processes.
I don’t know if I could have picked a better example I am no expert. I’m simply disheartened so many struggle to distinguish between processed and ultra processed.
Olive oil is processed; if then, in an industrial process they extract the glyceride from that process and isolate it to its chemical form, to only then inject it into another food stuff product, that’s ultra processed.
Im not that smart, anyone feel free to holler at me for being incorrect. This is my understanding however.
I gave up Ultra-processed foods 15-20 years ago and lost a lot of weight, and maintained that weight loss for years only using the avoidance of ultra-processed foods. Of course when I got slack, I gained again. So to me it seems obvious the harms. However, one could argue injecting vitamin c to a food is healthy, and would be defined as going through ultra process to isolate the vitamin compound.
But there is, to me, something sinister to have food scientists engineer food to be highly palatable and addictive, while also being detrimental to our health. Looking at you hot cheetos.
Just when I discovered frozen meals… 😟
There are different levels of processed food. A meal cooked, frozen, and shipped can have less risk than a sausage with a stick in it wrapped with a blueberry pancake infused with syrup.
Use your best judgement.
“Use your best judgement” to read ingredient lables and spend a few hours looking up what you don’t recognize.
You’ll quickly get a grip on what is processed and what is ultra-processed, and why the later is not so great.
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.
Was a bit surprised to see bread there, as it’s been a staple of many cultures’ cuisines for millennia. Did a quick search, and got some clarity in this list - “mass-produced packaged bread” is UPF, not the stuff you make from scratch or perhaps pick up from the local bakery.
A relief, actually, as I just took a loaf of sourdough out of the oven and was waiting for it to be cool enough to slice into. This article took the shine off the experience for a moment there 😅
Yeah the typical American stuff is like 10% sugar, packed with additives like emulsifiers and preservatives, and anything that makes the production processes cheaper and faster, made from bleached flour and has most of the fibre stripped out.
If your bread is made from flour, water, salt and yeast its processed food not UPF.
I remember the first time I visited the States, and bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter from the grocery store on my first night to make toast the following morning. Boy, did the unexpected sugar hit at breakfast time wake me up! HFCS really is in everything over there. Not at all surprised that packaged bread is classed as UPF.
The supermarket bread that looks and feels like a squeaky toy. Best to avoid that one.
But I like the sound it makes when I eat it :(
Enjoy that sourdough!! I have always wanted to get into baking bread. I will eventually get there someday. The semolina my local bakery makes is 😗🤌 i love bread
Ooh, semolina, nice! Love me some Pane Siciliano… Think you just inspired my next loaf 🤭
(Highly recommend breadmaking as a hobby, if the spirit moves you. Very meditative - particularly the kneading - with bonus baked goods when you’re done!)
surprised Pikachu face
That hot dog bun and the cupcake with a head next to it are concerning
Yeah, but it’s delicious and makes me feel good and I don’t want to be 90 anyway. Wait, smokers say that. Shit.
The food industry is going to go through the same rebuke that the tobacco industry went through only bigger.
Should go through, but it won’t.
Tobacco? Should have gone through, but it didn’t.
What’s going to be the upf equivalent of vapes?
Wraps.
I switched from white bread to 100% whole grain about a decade ago after learning just how much better it was supposed to be. I wonder if it’s actually still pretty awful after reading this
No, it’s not. This refers to pre-packaged bread, e. g. white bread, toast etc. - the stuff you find in a supermarket shelf, full of preservatives and other additives.
So… leading German “Toastbrot” brand, Goldentoast, their “American Sandwich”:
Wheat flour, water, wheat sourdough (wheat flour, water), canola oil, sugar, yeast, salt, acidity regular sodium acetates, fava bean flour. May contain traces of soy, milk, mustard and lupins.
I do wonder why they feel the need to have an acidity regulator, the sourdough those industrial outfits are using is made using pure-bred strains, highly replicable and generally flexible enough to get the exact amount and type of acidity (lactic vs. acetic acid) that you want. Fava bean flour last definitely looks like they did quite some engineering, those are minuscule adjustments to the overall flour mix. Used as a characteristic ingredient you’d use 20% of flourweight of the stuff, thereabouts, and about 5% if you want it for dough properties.
Is it good bread, no, but nutritionally it doesn’t really look worse than any other white bread. Actually American bread would be highly illegal over here.
Sigh… I get my wholegrain pre-packaged. I guess I’ll die.
If your bread goes moldy in a week, you might be good! (Am not an expert)
Often in less than a week, especially in a warm humid climate (or days of that type weather).
It’s a shame that bread and donuts are de facto considered ultra processed foods now. Done right, they totally aren’t.
The pictures also shows french fries and popcorn. In my house those are literally just potatoes and olive oil and popcorn and olive oil respectively, maybe some salt. Bad for me? Maybe, but ultra processed?
I think they might be referencing the pre-packaged-already-popped popcorn or the microwavable version.
I’m rather surprised you are able to pop corn with olive oil. Temp-wise you would hit the smoke point well before the oil was hot enough to pop the kernals, which would be smoky misery in the kitchen.
Not true, I use EVOO and it doesnt smoke. Oil goes in with a couple of kernels on the heat, when they pop remove and add the rest of the kernels. Remove when popping stops.
Maybe its a case of lower heat, more time?
I use grapeseed oil in my dutch oven to make popcorn. I assumed olive oil wouldn’t work, maybe I’ll try a batch with olive oil. I’ll let y’all know later if I smoke my kitchen out or not lol
Isn’t the reason it pops because of steam building up pressure inside the kernel? Then you would only need to heat them somewhere above 100C, and evoo doesnt smoke until 200C+
Slicing them to vastly multiply their surface area so that more Maillard reaction can occur, and it’s that Maillard reaction that causes the yummy browning, and causes the proteins and starches to change and become potentially harmful/carcinogenic, plus yes the addition of fatty oil that wasn’t present at all.
A lot of us think of “processing” as like, something a food processor does - reducing and changing the form. But it’s also the chemical changes that occur during cooking as a result of the physical processes. When you look at the before/after of a potato and an equal volume of fries, it’s apparent you’ve drastically changed the base food.
Yeah, cutting, cooking, chemically altering, and dehydrating foods are all forms of processing them. There are very few foods people can actually eat without any form of processing, and the ones that we can offer basically no protein, fat, or complex carbohydrates, mostly just sugar, fiber and vitamins (not necessarily bad, but you need more)
Even done fast they could be better.
The Aerated Baking Company had bread close to as fast and cheap as the modern Chorleywood process, but it isn’t ultra-glutenous. They were also an early feminist icon.
Is there a link to the actual study? The American Journal link seems to be a different one, and that one has a massive list of types of items classified as UPF (check Appendix A, Table 1), so it’s hard to identify what the causal factor(s) are.
Here’s a link to the journal website with a search for ultra-processed food.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/search?qs=ultra-processed+food
