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.
That hot dog bun and the cupcake with a head next to it are concerning
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.
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
Yeah, but it’s delicious and makes me feel good and I don’t want to be 90 anyway. Wait, smokers say that. Shit.
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
It’s a shame that bread and donuts are de facto considered ultra processed foods now. Done right, they totally aren’t.
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
There’s bread and there’s bread and there’s bread. All are highly processed, given the milling, kneading, fermentation, and baking required for bread, but there’s a huge gap between wonder bread and Russian black bread. I’d be very surprised if the latter is worse for you than bananas, a starch we eat with very little processing
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.
What about smoking, can you make a study on that too? /s
Actually it’s important to do these studies so that you have real proof, but man was the outcome not unexpected.
I knew bad food was bad but this numbers are kind of jarring.
