A new long-term study reveals that consuming high amounts of ultra-processed foods may increase your risk of early death by about 10%. The research, presented at the American Society for Nutrition’s NUTRITION 2024 conference, tracked over half a million U.S. adults for nearly three decades, providing some of the strongest evidence yet on the potential health risks of highly processed diets.
Processed Meats and Soft Drinks Top the Danger List
The study found that certain ultra-processed foods were more strongly associated with increased mortality risk than others. Processed meats like hot dogs and deli meats, along with sugar-sweetened beverages, showed the strongest links to higher death rates.
“We observed that highly processed meat and soft drinks were a couple of the subgroups of ultra-processed food most strongly associated with mortality risk and eating a diet low in these foods is already recommended for disease prevention and health promotion,” said Erikka Loftfield, PhD, Stadtman Investigator at the National Cancer Institute, who led the research.
Beyond Obesity and Poor Diet Quality
While people who ate more ultra-processed foods tended to have higher body mass indexes and lower overall diet quality, these factors didn’t fully explain the increased mortality risk. The association between ultra-processed food intake and higher death rates persisted even among people with better diet quality and normal weight.
The study analyzed data from over 540,000 adults who were between 50 and 71 years old when they provided information about their eating habits in the mid-1990s. Researchers compared death rates between those in the 90th percentile for ultra-processed food consumption versus those in the 10th percentile.
“Our study results support a larger body of literature, including both observational and experimental studies, which indicate that ultra-processed food intake adversely impacts health and longevity,” Loftfield explained. “However, there is still a lot that we don’t know, including what aspects of ultra-processed foods pose potential health risks.”
The researchers used multiple strategies to classify food processing levels, including the NOVA classification system and expert consensus. They also accounted for other mortality risk factors like smoking and obesity in their analysis.
While the study found links between ultra-processed food consumption and increased risk of death from any cause, as well as deaths specifically related to heart disease or diabetes, no association was found for cancer-related deaths.
It’s important to note that this study can’t prove causation, and dietary habits have changed significantly since the 1990s when the baseline data was collected. The researchers emphasize the need for continued research to further understand the relationship between food processing and human health.
As we await more definitive answers, the current findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that limiting ultra-processed foods – especially processed meats and sugary drinks – could be a smart move for long-term health. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines already recommend limiting these items, advice that seems increasingly prudent in light of this latest research.
