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More Data Suggests 'Ultraprocessed' Foods Can Shorten Your Life

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on May 9, 2024.

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, May 9, 2024 -- People who eat large amounts of ultra-processed foods have a slightly higher risk of premature death than those who mostly shun the industrially produced eats, a new 30-year study says.

Those who ate the most ultra-processed foods – an average of seven servings a day – had a 4% higher risk of death overall, and a 9% higher risk of death from causes other than cancer or heart disease.

These higher risks of death “were mainly driven by meat/poultry/seafood based ready-to-eat products, sugar and artificially sweetened beverages, dairy based desserts, and ultra-processed breakfast foods,” wrote the team led by senior researcher Mingyang Song, an associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

Ultra-processed foods are made mostly from substances extracted from whole foods, like saturated fats, starches and added sugars. They also contain a wide variety of additives to make them more tasty, attractive and shelf-stable, including colors, emulsifiers, flavors and stabilizers.

Examples include packaged baked goods, sugary cereals, ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat products, and deli cold cuts, researchers said.

Mounting evidence has linked these foods to higher risks of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and bowel cancer, researchers said. However, few long-term studies have examined these products’ links to a person’s overall risk of death.

For this study, researchers tracked the long-term health of nearly 75,000 female registered nurses and nearly 40,000 male health professionals.

Both groups took part in separate health studies that ran from the mid-1980s to 2018. Every two years, participants provided information on their health and lifestyle habits, and every four years they completed a detailed food questionnaire.

During an average 34-year follow-up period, researchers identified more than 48,000 deaths.

Although increased consumption of ultra-processed foods was linked to a higher risk of death, researchers noted that the association became less pronounced after they took a person’s overall dietary quality into account.

The study found that dietary quality had a greater influence on risk of early death than did consumption of ultra-processed foods.

That could mean that eating lots of healthy whole foods might offset the detrimental effects of ultra-processed chow, researchers said.

“The findings provide support for limiting consumption of certain types of ultra-processed food for long term health,” the team concluded, adding that “future studies are warranted to improve the classification of ultra-processed foods and confirm our findings in other populations.”

In an editorial accompanying the study, experts pointed out that recommendations to avoid ultra-processed foods might give the idea that certain whole but unhealthy foods like red meat are fine to eat often.

The study and editorial appear in the BMJ.

Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted May 2024

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