Modern, fast-paced lifestyle gives us little time to cook from scratch. Our diet now contains more and more of unnatural, ultra-processed foods (UPF). Extensive industrial processing produces foods that are high in harmful preservatives, chemical additives, salt, oil and sugar content, and low in nutrients that we really need for good health. We all have been told time and again that these processed foods are not too beneficial for health, but a recent revelation by a new research gives us more reasons to worry and shun these foods.
A study by the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention at the IRCCS Neuromed, in Italy, now confirms that these foods are harmful for us. In fact, they even increase death rate in humans by a considerable number. The study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Marialaura Bonaccio, lead author of the study said, "We aimed to assess the association between UPF and mortality risk in a large sample of the Italian adult population and test which nutritional factors were on the pathway of this relation. Established risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) were analysed as potential biological mechanisms linking UPF to mortality."
The researchers conducted a longitudinal analysis on 22,475 men and women recruited in the Moli-sani Study (2005-2010, Italy) and followed it for 8.2 years. They analysed food intake of the participants keeping an eye on the intake and impact of UPF.
A high proportion of UPF in the diet was associated with increased risk of CVD and all-cause mortality, partly through its high dietary content of sugar. It was proven that people consuming excessive amount of processed foods like frozen meals, hot dogs, packaged juices, sweets and salty snacks were 26 percent more likely to die of any cause, 58% specifically from cardiovascular diseases.
"These findings should serve as an incentive for limiting consumption of UPF, and encouraging natural or minimally processed foods, as several national nutritional policies recommend," Marialaura Bonaccio concluded.
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