The latest findings from a health study may have you rethinking your drive-thru dinner plans since it warns eating a lot of heavily processed foods is linked to a risk of earlier death, according to The Guardian.
The new research found we face a 14% higher risk of early death with every 10% increase in the amount of ultra-processed foods we eat.
The team in France worked with more than 44,000 people in a ten-year study called NutriNet-Santé which tracked the diet, calories, and "ultra-processed" foods people ate across several years.
Throughout the study, there were 602 deaths, 219 of which were from cancer and 34 of which were from cardiovascular disease.
The research, which was published on Monday in the journal Jama Internal Medicine, found death was more likely to occur for those who are more ultra-processed foods than others, even when factoring in food deprivation, smoking, obesity, and education background.
"Ultra-processed foods are manufactured industrially from multiple ingredients that usually include additives used for technological and/or cosmetic purposes," wrote the authors of the study. "Ultra-processed foods are mostly consumed in the form of snacks, desserts, or ready-to-eat or -heat meals," and their consumption "has largely increased during the past several decades."
The study comes as more and more people around the world are eating ultra-processed foods.
The study said nearly 61% of adults in the U.S. have their diet come from ultra-processed foods, with Canadians at 62%, and Brits at 63%, according to another study.
The study included more than 44,000 French adults who were 45 or older who were followed for two years while providing 24-hour dietary records at every six months, including filling out questionnaires about their health, weight, measurements, physical activity, and socio-demographics.
Researchers then calculated each person's overall dietary intake and consumption of ultra-processed foods, which made up more than 14% of the weight of total food consumers and nearly 29% of total calories.
Ultra-processed food consumption was associated with younger age, lower income, lower educational level, living alone, higher BMI and lower physical activity level, according to the study.
The authors said while further studies are needed to confirm their findings, they speculated the additives, chemicals from food packaging, and the processing itself could all be contributive factors of negative health.
The "findings make sense, given what we know to date about the deleterious effects of food additives on brain function and health, but the effects observed are very small," wrote Molly Bray, chairwoman of the Department of Nutritional Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin, in an email to CNN.
“The case against highly processed foods is mounting up, with this study adding importantly to a growing body of evidence on the health harms of ultra-processed foods,” said Professor Nita Forouhi, of the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge.
Forouhi also told The Guardian more evidence was needed to corroborate the findings, “yet we would ignore these findings at public health’s peril."
“A vital takeaway message is that consumption of highly processed foods reflects social inequalities – they are consumed disproportionately more by individuals with lower incomes or education levels, or those living alone,” Forouhi said. “Such foods are attractive because they tend to be cheaper, are highly palatable due to high sugar, salt and saturated fat content, are widely available, highly marketed, ready to eat, and their use-by dates are lengthy, so they last longer. More needs to be done to address these inequalities.”
-WN.com, Maureen Foody