Vegetarians consume more ultra-processed foods than those who regularly eat meat, research shows

A small team of public health officials from Imperial College London, working with colleagues from the University of São Paulo and the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer, has found evidence showing that people in Britain who follow a predominantly vegetarian diet have the tend to eat more ultra-processed foods than those who also eat meat.

In their newspaper published in eClinical Medicinethe group describes how they studied data in the UK Biobank project and what they learned about the consumption of ultra-processed foods in Britain

Previous research has shown that consumers in many Western countries are cutting back on meat consumption and therefore switching to a more plant-based diet. Reasons for this move range from the desire to eat healthier to wanting to eat more ethically, or because the price of meat has risen so high that it is becoming too expensive.

Unfortunately, such a move is not always healthier. In this new effort, the research team found that vegetarians and vegans in Britain eat more ultra-processed foods than people who also eat meat.

Vegetarianism is often equated with eating lots of fruits, nuts and vegetables. In practice that may be the case, but often it also includes the consumption of ultra-processed foods such as breakfast cereals, candy bars, noodles, fake meat and pizza.

Such foods have been found to contain a host of added, sometimes unhealthy, compounds and chemicals to enhance taste, improve texture, promote freshness, or simply make them look more appetizing. Meat, on the other hand, tends to undergo less processing because it looks and tastes good in its natural state.

To find out more about eating habits in Britain, healthy and otherwise, the researchers looked at data from 200,000 people whose patient information about eating habits is stored in the UK Biobank project. They found that people who followed a vegetarian or vegan diet also ate more ultra-processed foods than those who regularly ate meat. Such a finding suggests that the health benefits gained from eating less red meat are lost due to the health risks found in ultra-processed foods.

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