Eating ultra-processed food can damage your health, indicates research

Consumption of ultra-processed foods, such as sugar-sweet drinks, chips and packaged cookies, can be associated with adverse health results, according to research presented on the ACC Asia 2025 Together with SCS 36th annual scientific meeting that takes place from 9-11 May in Singapore.

This risk of hypertension, other cardiovascular events, cancer, digestive diseases, mortality and more, increased with every 100 grams of ultra-processed food that is consumed every day.

“Ultra-processed foods are characterized by high sugar, high salt and other non-food components, which show a low nutritional density and yet a high caloric content,” said Xiao Liu, MD, with the Cardiology department at Sun Yat-Sen Memous University in Guangzz, CHina.

“These products can contribute to adverse health results due to multiple mechanisms, including but not limited to disruption of blood lipid profiles, changes in the composition of the intestinal microbiota, promoting obesity, induction of systemic inflammation, aggravation of oxidative stress and unrest of insulating sensitivity.”

The systematic review included 41 prospective cohort studies on America, Europe, Asia and Oceania who assessed the association between ultra-processed foods and health results before April 2024. Together the studies had a total of 8.286,940 adult patients aged 18 years or older).

All recorded studies used the Nova Food Classification System to define ultra-processed foods as industrially manufactured foods derived from natural foods or other biological components. These products undergo extensive multi-phase processing and usually contain significant amounts of food additives, including preservatives, dyes and flavor enhancers.

According to the researchers, common examples of ultra-processed foods include commercially produced sandwiches, sugar-sweet drinks, potato chips, chocolate separator, candy, packaged cookies, etc.

The study showed that ultra-processed food consumption was associated with hypertension, cardiovascular events, cancer, digestive diseases and death for all causes.

Each extra 100 g/day of ultra-processed food consumption was associated with a 14.5% higher risk of hypertension, 5.9% increased the risk of cardiovascular events, 1.2% increased the risk of cancer, 19.5% higher risk of digestive diseases and 2.6% higher mortality. Researchers also saw an increased risk of obesity/overweight, metabolic syndromes/diabetes and depression/anxiety.

The researchers used the assessment of recommendation assessment, development and evaluation (degree) system to assess the quality of the evidence in the analysis. Grade assessment indicated a high to moderate certainty for most results, except for low security for metabolic syndrome/diabetes.

“Clinicians must clearly explain that ultra-processed foods usually contain a lot of sugars, sodium and unhealthy fats, while they have few fiber, essential vitamins and other protective nutrients. This nutritional balance is a wide range of negative health results,” Liu said.

“Up to evidence suggests a dose response relationship between ultra-processed food consumption and negative health results-what the more ultra-processed food is used, the greater the health risk. Therefore, reducing the ultra-intake of food, even modest, can offer even modest measurable health benefits.”

According to the researchers, governments can consider implementing measures to reduce the consumption of ultra-processed foods and to limit the associated health effects. Some proposed measures include the adoption of strict food labeling regulations, where manufacturers are needed to offer explicit and extensive ingredient public making-in particular all additives present in ultra-processed foods, Liu said.

Doctors must also encourage patients to gradually reduce their ultra-processed food intake, so that they are replaced by more nutrient, minimally processed foods.

Although the study was limited in generalizability and comparability through different definitions of ultra-processed food, Liu said that the findings are not only about what to avoid, but also to embrace what.

Upcoming evidence has linked health benefits to entire foods, simple ingredients and culturally suitable healthy eating patterns such as the Mediterranean or Dash diet, he said. Studies of high quality on this subject are also needed.